


Relaxation and Recreation

by JohnAmendAll



Series: Holiday Jobs [2]
Category: Doctor Who (1963)
Genre: Awesome Zoe Heriot, Classic Who companions are awesome, Clever Women, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-08-18
Updated: 2012-08-18
Packaged: 2017-11-12 10:19:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 20
Words: 35,098
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/489784
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JohnAmendAll/pseuds/JohnAmendAll
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>On a holiday she never wanted to take, Zoë finds herself investigating a mysterious death.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prologue: Wednesday

**Author's Note:**

> This is a sequel to my earlier fic [Extra-Curricular Activity](http://archiveofourown.org/works/489782), but you don't need to have read ECA to make sense of this. Like ECA, it's set some years after Zoë parted from the Doctor.
> 
> * * *

> Oh, a right wee space-detective. 
> 
>    _– Jamie McCrimmon_

It all started when we found ourselves waiting together for one of the grav-tubes. I'd seen her around now and then, and each time I thought she looked vaguely familiar. On the spur of the moment, I decided to ask her. 

"Excuse me," I said. "Are you Zoë Heriot?" 

She turned her full attention on me. Her cool, grey, enquiring eyes looked me up and down. I felt rather as if I was being scanned by a security camera. 

"Yes," she said. 

"We were at school together. I don't know if you'd remember me..." 

She gave me another stare, and I could imagine an LED coming on somewhere behind her eyes. "Lily Carson?" 

"That's right. You haven't changed a bit." 

"Considering I was eleven the last time we met, I'm not sure whether that's a good thing," she said. 

I wasn't sure if she was joking. It threw me a bit, and before I could come up with anything coherent the grav-tube she'd been waiting for chimed and the doors opened. 

"Sorry," she said. "I've got to go now." 

"Let's meet later and have a chat," I suggested. 

"OK." Zoë closed her eyes briefly. "How about twenty-fifteen at the main bar?" 

"Fine." 

"See you then." 

*

Normally, I wouldn't have bothered talking to Zoë; we had been at school together, but not in the same year, and we hadn't had any interests in common. But three days into my holiday, with no-one to talk to, I was glad to see any halfway friendly face. 

When I'd originally booked into the Deep Space Recreation and Relaxation Complex, the idea had been to have a romantic holiday with my boyfriend. Within days of the tickets arriving, we'd broken up – very loudly, and very finally. Since I'd paid for the tickets, I hung on to them, and decided to take the holiday anyway, more out of cussedness than anything. I'd been regretting that decision ever since the shuttle lifted off. Mind you, if I'd decided against going, I'd probably have been regretting that too. 

The brochures I'd read had made the Complex out to be the height of luxury and sophistication, with all sorts of facilities you couldn't get on Earth. Maybe it was the mood I was in, but it seemed to me that in their haste to install low-gravity waterchutes and helical triathlon courses, they'd rather glossed over the parts you _could_ get on Earth. I suppose if you'd just come off a fifty-week tour of duty in a space station the Complex would have seemed like luxury, but for a normal Earthwoman, it was a bit on the spartan side. And the local day was only twenty-two-and-a-bit hours long. The asteroid where the Complex is takes just under seven and a half hours to spin, so they took three spins and called it a day. Which meant I woke up tired and cross each morning. 

When I met Zoë in the bar, I ended up telling her all this at great length. Once I'd got it all off my chest, I felt a bit better and asked her how she was finding things. 

"Bluntly, I'm bored," she said. "Bored, bored, bored. When you bumped into me this afternoon, I was on my way to play zero-G tennis. Just taking an existing game and playing it in weightless conditions doesn't automatically make it thrilling, in my opinion. And all the young men insisted their girlfriends did it wearing skirts. Well, you can imagine. It nearly put me off my dinner. Sorry, have I upset you?" 

I was still a bit sensitive to any mentions of young men and girlfriends, but I tried not to show it. On the other hand, I could just picture Tim holding up something borderline indecent and demanding I play tennis in it. His new girl was welcome to him. 

"How do you come to be here?" I asked. 

"I won an award at work. You know the sort of thing. If someone's saved the company half-a-million credits, or improved the efficiency of the Bernalium cycle, they get a pat on the back and a choice of prizes from some company that packages and sells fun by the metre. Oh, and a hideous chrome-plated thing with their name engraved on it. On a stick." 

"You're getting cynical in your old age." 

Zoë put her head in her hands. "People keep saying that." 

"And you chose to come here?" 

"Yes. Most of the other options seemed to be cookery courses run by second-rate celebrity chefs. Who cooks these days?" 

"I suppose people go to meet the chefs." 

"Not my idea of fun." Zoë shook her head. "Whereas, in theory, this place could be. It's just... all these sports seem so unadventurous. There's no element of risk." 

"I'd have thought you'd had enough risk to last you a lifetime," I said. She hadn't wanted to talk much about whatever it was happened to her on that space station. I'd seen it on the news at the time, of course. Life-support failure and six or seven people killed. If the alternative to boredom was that sort of thing I was ready to put up with boredom. 

Zoë seemed to be thinking along the same lines. "You'd think so, wouldn't you? That's the logical approach. But there's something in here" – she tapped her head – "that seems to work better if I'm in danger." 

"And you haven't found any here?" 

"Have you?" 

I shrugged. "Well, I wasn't looking for it. But I take your point. Have you done the moon buggy racing yet?" 

"I do that tomorrow, I think. I don't hold out any great hopes for it." 

That took the conversation onto the various activities the Complex offered, and that kept us busy for a while. After that we got on to trying to embarrass each other with stupid things we'd done at school, and that lasted the rest of the evening. 

*

When the bar closed, we went back to my suite. I don't know how long Zoë would have stayed, but before I'd even managed to offer her a nightcap the comms panel buzzed. It turned out to be a call for Zoë – everyone staying at the Complex wears locator bracelets, so they can track you down wherever you are – and I went into the bedroom to give her some privacy. The call was quite a long one, and after she'd hung up she followed me into the bedroom and sat on the bed beside me, looking very serious. In the bar, with a few drinks inside her, she'd shown a bit of animation, but whatever she'd heard seemed to have sobered her completely. 

"You know what I was saying earlier?" she said. "About wanting to take risks?" 

I nodded. 

"How do you feel about taking some now?" 

I wasn't sure how I felt, so I stalled. "Whatever do you mean?" 

Zoë leaned forward and lowered her voice. "Lily, will you swear not to tell anybody this?" 

"Are you serious?" 

"Of course I am." 

She was, too. I havered for a bit, but ended up promising to keep whatever she told me secret. 

"There's been a death here. Some time today. And there are people– well, I can't tell you who they are, but they seem to think it's murder." 

"I think you'd better explain," I said. "Who's been murdered?" 

Zoë was still sitting on the bed, and when she spoke she sounded as cool as a cucumber. I'd noticed earlier, when we were chatting in the bar, that nothing seemed to faze her. It was as if her mind had a scratch-resistant plastic coating. 

"I'll start at the beginning," she said. "A while ago, I found myself doing a temporary job for an agency. Except the agency turned out to be a front for– well, let's say a security organisation. And after I'd finished, they made it very clear that they were keeping my contact details on file. 

"Just now they rang me up. They had an agent somewhere here, and he didn't report in when he was supposed to. A search was made and he was found dead in his room. Maybe it was just natural causes, but they're suspicious people and they can't rule out the possibility of foul play. They won't be able to get another operative out here for a couple of days, so they looked down the guest list, and found me. Obviously I'm an amateur, but rather me than nothing." 

"So they want you to play detective?" 

"That's it." 

"But what can you hope to find in two days? Why can't you leave it until the real detective arrives?" 

"Think it through," Zoë said. "You're up to no good. You find there's a secret agent nosing around, and he's discovered what you're doing. You kill him – we'll come back to that. Are you with me so far?" 

"Yes." 

"Good. Now, you know it'll take two days to send out a replacement. What do you do?" 

I thought. "I try to get away." 

"You can't. The space terminal's been shut down. That has happened, by the way. I saw the notice in reception this evening. They say it's a technical fault." 

"Then I spend the time covering my tracks, so when the new detective comes he can't find any evidence against me." 

Zoë shook her head. "That wasn't what I was thinking. Assume the man was murdered, and it was premeditated. The murderer knows that in two to three days he'll be up to his neck in detectives. But he goes ahead with the murder. Why?" 

I had to think for quite a bit before I saw what she was driving at. 

"Whatever he's up to, he's still doing it. And he thinks he can finish it before the detectives get here." 

"There you are, then," Zoë said, looking very pleased with herself. 

"But what does he do after that?" 

"Well, he still can't get away, but perhaps it doesn't matter so much by then. Completing his mission might be more important to him than escaping." 

"But hang on. If you're right about all this, and the murderer finds out you're investigating, he'll try to kill you too." 

"That's right. I told you this was risky. Can you do something for me?" 

"What?" 

"Have you got a pen and paper?" 

"In the dressing table. Middle drawer." 

She crossed to the dressing table, found a notepad and pen, tore off a sheet of paper, scribbled a few lines on it, folded it in half, and gave it to me. 

"If anything happens to me, read this and do what it says," she said. "And now I think I ought to get some sleep. Good night, and thank you for an enjoyable evening." 

All I could manage was a strangled "But...". I don't know what I'd been expecting Zoë to do, but certainly not that she'd go meekly off to bed like that. "Is that safe?" 

She shook her head. "I don't know. What else would you suggest?" 

"You could sleep here," I suggested. "We wouldn't have to share the bed or anything. I could sleep on the floor, or in a chair." 

"That's very kind of you." She bent down and examined the bed, her mind temporarily focused on this new problem. "Actually, I think this bed's modular. If you undid the right bolts it would probably come in two and we'd have half each." 

"Oh, then–" 

"But I still don't think it's a good idea. I've been told I'm not a good roommate. Apparently I talk in my sleep. Good night." 

This time, she really did go. I don't know how badly I'd have slept if she had stayed, but it could hardly have been much worse than I managed on my own. 


	2. Prologue: Wednesday

The next morning, I went to breakfast pretty early, but Zoë was there before me. She was dressed formally, in a smart jacket and trousers, and reminded me of a prim porcelain doll. 

"As you can see, I'm still alive so far," she said, sounding as cheerful as ever. 

"Well, yes." 

"But just in case you happen to be the murderer, I should tell you that I've taken precautions. At the moment you're the only person here who knows what I'm doing, so if I die suspiciously you'll be the prime suspect." 

"Why would I kill– Zoë, I don't even know the man's name!" 

She gazed calmly back at me. "I've only your word for that." 

I felt a momentary temptation to shake her by the shoulders until she started talking sense. In the event, I settled for taking a deep breath. 

"I'm sure you're only trying to be careful," I said. "But we'll never get anywhere if you're going to keep everything this close to your chest." 

"We?" 

"Don't you want me to help you? I thought last night..." 

"All I meant was keeping that note and doing what it says if I get killed. I can't really ask you to do more than that. As I said, this could be dangerous." 

"I don't care," I said, though I'm not sure if I quite believed that. "If there is danger, we can watch each other's backs. I know we don't really know each other and you've got no reason to trust me, but I can't just leave you to do this on your own." 

Zoë looked thoughtful for a little while. 

"Well," she said. "Another perspective would be useful. Do you have any particular abilities I should know about?" 

"What, like super-speed or turning into water?" I asked. 

That made her laugh. "No. I meant things like pathology or genetic fingerprinting." 

"I just work in an office. I manage a few people. That's all." 

"That could still be useful. My people skills... My last assessment said 'room for improvement', and it was nearly 'considerable room for improvement'. If you can help in that respect, I'd appreciate it." 

"You're on," I said. 

*

Zoë had already made an appointment to see Doctor Fowler, who was the Complex's resident medic, and after breakfast we went straight to his office. It all started a bit confusingly, because he called Zoë "Doctor Heriot". I hadn't realised she was a doctor, and she had to explain to us that this was a PhD in astrophysics and nothing to do with medicine. 

Once we'd got that sorted out, I was introduced as "My colleague, Ms Carson," and we all shook hands. 

"Now then," he began. "What can I do for you two ladies?" 

"Yesterday, a man died here," Zoë said briskly. "A Mr Warner. I've been asked to make some inquiries." 

Doctor Fowler looked at her, rather taken aback. 

"On whose authority?" he asked. 

"My credentials have been registered with the central computer. Feel free to check them." 

He did. The computer came up with some story about Zoë being a licensed insurance detective. I'm sure there wasn't a gram of truth in it, but it seemed to pass muster with Doctor Fowler. 

As soon as her credentials had been established, Zoë went straight back to her line of questioning. 

"What can you tell us about Mr Warner's death?" 

"I was contacted by the head of security, Ms Lombardi, last night, at about twenty-two-hundred. A caller had been trying to get in touch with Mr Warner, but he wasn't answering. Ms Lombardi and I met outside his room, and she opened the door with her master key. Mr Warner was lying on his face near the door." 

"He was dead?" 

"He was. I double-checked, of course." 

"What was he wearing?" 

"Shirt and trousers. Socks, but no shoes." 

"So he hadn't gone to bed?" 

"I don't think so, but I don't remember what the bed looked like." 

"You didn't notice anything out of the ordinary?" 

"Nothing." 

"Were you able to establish a cause of death?" 

"For a definite answer, you'll have to wait until the formal autopsy, wherever and whenever that takes place. I don't have the proper facilities here." 

I wondered whether he had the experience, too. At the Complex, he'd have been spending his time dealing with sprained ankles and broken arms, not forensic pathology. 

"Off the record," he continued, "I'll be very interested to see what they come up with. There were no signs of violence..." 

"No puncture wounds from something being injected, for instance?" Zoë asked. 

"None." 

"That wouldn't rule out poisoning, would it?" I said. "He could have been given it in his food." 

"He could. But in that case, there would almost certainly have been other visible symptoms." 

"There are synthetic poisons that can kill you just like that, though, aren't there?" I persisted. "And they wouldn't show up unless you did a full autopsy?" 

"I suppose so. A military-grade neurotoxin could do what you suggest – but you couldn't drop that into someone's dinner, unless you wanted them to keel over there and then." 

"No, for that you'd have to poison him in his room," Zoë said thoughtfully. "Or hide some sort of device there. Was the room searched?" 

"You'd have to speak to Ms Lombardi about that. My concern was removing Mr Warner's remains." 

"Of course." 

"Was there anything else?" 

Zoë thought for a moment. 

"I wonder," she said, sounding curious, scientific and positively cold-blooded. "Could I see the body?" 

"I'm afraid not. Until the official procedures are complete, I can't allow the possibility of accidental contamination." 

"I should have thought of that. Oh, well. Thank you for your time, Doctor." 

"My pleasure, Doctor Heriot, Ms Carson." 

We all shook hands again, and then the two of us left. 

*

One of the bits of the Complex where they had taken some care with the decor was the central atrium. It was oval, four storeys high, with a glass ceiling so you could see the stars. A broad ramp spiralled round the outside; the artificial gravity on it had been tweaked so that even though it sloped, it felt nearly level. Zoë and I were currently leaning on the railing at the outer edge of the ramp, near the top. 

"Obviously the next thing to do is see this security chief," I said. 

"I've asked for an appointment." Zoë was still looking over the railing, not at me. "The question is, what do we do until then?" 

I thought back to the detective vids I'd seen. They weren't a lot of help. 

"We can't examine the room," I said. "We don't have the skills and we'd probably ruin all the evidence. We can't examine the body, for the same reason. We can't interview suspects, because we haven't got any." 

"Then we'd better find some." Zoë toyed with her bracelet. "In theory, if these bracelets are tracked, we could see who was in the same room with Mr Warner at various times through the day. I'll enquire about that." 

"I could ask in the restaurant," I said. "See if any of the staff noticed him eating with someone." 

"That's a good idea." Zoë looked slightly put out. "I wish I'd thought of it." 

"You can't have all the good ideas, you know." 

"I know, but that's me all over. So wrapped up in the technology that I don't think of talking to people." She shrugged. "What else can we do? Trace Mr Warner's movements, I suppose. We'll have to see what the security logs come up with." 

"Don't we have any idea what he was investigating?" I asked. "Can't we just pick up his case where he left off?" 

Zoë took a deep breath. "He was looking into the possibility that there was an alien artefact for sale. Apparently there's a tremendous underground market in these things. He'd pretty much ruled out the possibility, and just had a few loose ends to tie up. That was in the last report, the one he made the day before his body was found." 

"A few loose ends," I repeated. 

"Exactly. It looks as if one of those loose ends–" 

Zoë's bracelet chirped, and she broke off and dashed over to a computer terminal to answer the call. It didn't take too long. 

"That was the security chief," she said. "She's prepared to let me see the logs..." 

"But?" 

"But only me. I can see her reasoning." 

I could, too. "You've got some security firm to vouch for you. All I've got is you." 

"You don't mind?" Zoë asked. 

"No. I'll go and see what I can find out from the staff." 

"Right, then. I'll see you back here." She turned and walked briskly away. 

"Good luck," I called after her. 

*

Talking to the staff might have been a good idea, if I could have found any. The restaurant was deserted, except for a robotic trolley gliding about cleaning the floor. I ended up wandering the corridors like a lost soul, with the intention of showing anyone I met holographs of Mr Warner and asking if they remembered seeing him. Of the few people I did meet, nobody could tell me anything. 

After what felt like hours of this, I'd had enough, and headed back to meet Zoë. As I passed the restaurant, though, I saw someone in there, and decided I might as well talk to them before writing the morning off as a complete loss. 

"Excuse me," I began. 

The man looked round. By the look of him, he was working for the Complex rather than being a guest, so that was a hopeful sign. 

"Yes?" he said. 

I launched into my spiel. "I'm sorry to bother you, but I'm making enquiries in connection with the death last night of Mr Eric Warner." 

Once again, I pulled out my holographs and showed them to him. 

"Do you remember seeing him yesterday at all?" I concluded. 

He nodded slowly. 

"Yes. He was at dinner. I should be able to look him up on the billing system." 

He led me into a little office off the restaurant. 

_So much for talking to people rather than computers_ , I thought. _The people just ask the computer for you_. 

"Here we are," he said. "Breakfast at table 14, cross-reference to Ms Evans. Lunch at table 27, cross-reference to Mr and Mrs Sung. And dinner at table 4, cross-reference to Mr Maranga." 

I carefully noted down the details he'd given. 

"You didn't notice anything else?" I asked. 

He shook his head. "Like what?" 

"How he looked?" I asked vaguely. "How he got on with the people he was eating with?" 

"Sorry. I'd've noticed if there'd been a stand-up row or something like that, but otherwise..." He shook his head again. 

"Thanks anyway," I said, and left it at that. 

*

By the time I got back to the atrium, Zoë was already there, pacing up and down. I told her what I'd learned, and asked how she'd got on. 

"I went through everything with the security chief," she said. 

"And?" 

"She's pretty sure it can't be murder. According to the logs, no-one's been in Mr Warner's room except him. There weren't any booby traps or suspicious devices, and no empty containers that might have held poison. And it can't be suicide, for the same reason. So she's not going to take any action other than sealing the room and waiting for the official investigator to come. If she's wrong and there is a murderer here, he'll still be here then, so there isn't any risk – except to us, of course." 

"But what about what you were saying last night? All that about the murderer having a plan and it would be too late to stop them?" 

"I didn't mention that. I don't think she's spoken to– to the people I'm working for. As far as she's concerned, Mr Warner was just a tourist, and I'm an insurance detective. So from her point of view, there's no reason to suspect foul play." 

"Did she test for fingerprints?" 

"No. The Complex hasn't got any forensic equipment, you see. She'd have had to do it the old way, with powder and a camera." 

"And she'd only go to that sort of trouble if murder was suspected?" 

"Exactly." 

"So it was a waste of time going there?" 

Zoë shook her head. "It's closed off certain possibilities. And she let me borrow a master key." She tapped her bracelet. "This should open any door in the Complex." 

"But if she doesn't think there was anything suspicious..." 

"She doesn't. But she's willing to let me make some more enquiries." 

"Could she be right? I mean, if he died alone in his room, and he wasn't given some kind of slow poison–" 

"We don't know he was alone." 

"But you said that according to the security logs, he was." 

Zoë tapped her bracelet again. "It isn't that simple. The problem– well, there are several problems. The main one is that the security system tracks bracelets, not people. If you're a normal visitor, that's fine. You have your bracelet, and it lets you into your room, and people can get in touch with you. But if you're up to no good, you swap your bracelet with someone else and there you go. Or you hide your bracelet and go about with somebody else." 

"So you think someone went back to Mr Warner's room with him, and killed him?" I was the one pacing now. "And then, he used Mr Warner's bracelet to open the door, slipped out into the corridor, and threw the bracelet back before the door closed behind him." 

"I don't think it's that simple," Zoë said. "The last time Mr Warner's door opened was when he went back to his room after dinner. It didn't open again until it was overridden by Ms Lombardi." 

"That's awkward." 

"Yes. It rules out all sorts of promising theories." 

"So he was alone when he died?" 

"I can't be sure of that. We'll need to check that there's no other way into the room." 

"What, ventilation ducts?" 

Zoë nodded. "Or construction shafts, maintenance areas, that sort of thing." 

"But you said we weren't allowed into the room." 

"We aren't, so we'll have to do the best we can. Check the building plans, if we can get at them, and look at the adjacent rooms." She started counting off on her fingers. "One. Query other means of getting into the rooms. Two. Interview the witnesses we've got so far. Three. Trace Mr Warner's movements through–" 

There was a quiet, discreet beep behind me. I turned, to see a cleaning robot – like the one in the restaurant, a long, low trolley, less than a metre high and perhaps two metres long. Three or four telescopic arms, neatly folded, ran along each side. The flat top was laden with sheets, towels, canisters, plastic bottles, even a rack of little packets of coffee and sweetener. We stood aside to let it pass. 

"Anyway," Zoë continued. "We need to find out what Mr Warner was doing in between his meals." 

"Yes..." I was still watching the robot gliding down the spiral ramp. "Zoë, those robots go into everyone's rooms, don't they, to make the beds and so on?" 

"Of course they do." 

"So could you hide on one? Lie down on it, and pull the covers over you? Or perhaps there's room to hide in that boxed-in bit at the bottom?" 

"That's not a bad idea," Zoë said thoughtfully. "Four. See if robot visits to rooms are recorded, and if one was made that evening. Even if there wasn't someone hiding on board, you could program a robot to go in and remove all sorts of evidence." 

"What about a T-Mat?" I asked. "You could teleport into the room, do your murder, and teleport out again." 

Zoë shook her head. "T-Mat needs equipment at both ends. If you try doing it without a receiver, it just destroys whatever's transported. You have to bypass all sorts of safety protocols to do that, of course." 

"I never knew you could do that." 

"No." She rubbed her head, looking puzzled for a moment. "It isn't widely known. I'm not sure where I heard it... 

"In any case," she added, "there aren't any T-Mats here. I checked that with Ms Lombardi. They'd only be used to get people on and off visiting spaceships, and you might as well use the spaceport for that." 

"All right," I said. "What do we do now?" 

Zoë set out down the spiral. 

"There's a comms booth in the reception area," she said. "Let's try and schedule interviews with the witnesses we've got so far." 


	3. Thursday (am)

Zoë emerged from the comms booth, looking her usual calm and unflustered self. 

"That's all settled," she said. "Mr Maranga will see us in fifteen minutes. At least, that's what his secretary said." 

"His secretary?" 

"Oh, didn't you know? He's the chief executive of Solar Logistics. Where was I? The Sungs come next. Mrs Sung suggested we join them at lunch. I haven't been able to get hold of Ms Evans yet." 

"Zoë, wait a moment. Did you say 'chief executive'?" 

"Yes." 

"Of a huge transport business?" 

"Yes." 

"And you've pulled him out of who knows what important discussions..." 

Zoë shook her head. "He's come here on holiday. I don't think I've interrupted anything apart from his game of golf. Anyway, murder's pretty important too." 

"I just hope you know what you're doing." 

"No," Zoë said cheerfully. "I'm making this up as I go along. Excuse me." 

While we'd been talking, we'd been wandering in the direction of the main reception desk, and Zoë's last sentence had been addressed to the young chap behind it. Like the kitchen manager, he had the look of a student on a summer job – not that there were summers or winters out here, but there were still universities and vacations. According to his name badge, he was called Claude. 

"Are you the chief receptionist?" Zoë asked. 

He looked up, and put on a stock expression of eager helpfulness. "That's right. How may I assist you?" 

"You're responsible for issuing the security bracelets?" Zoë still hadn't got the hang of leading gently up to the subject she was interested in. It was straight down to business with her. 

"That's right." 

"Can you give us an overview of the procedures you follow?" 

"I'm afraid I'm not at liberty to disclose that information." 

I could see Zoë was putting his back up, and decided to take a hand. 

"We're not trying to suggest you've done anything wrong," I said, giving him my best smile. "But there's been a... a rumour that one of the guests' rooms had been broken into. Naturally we're concerned." 

He still looked a bit wary, but unbent slightly. 

"I assure you, Miss, the security here is state of the art. All the bracelets are checked out and back by the computer, so there's no chance of someone else getting the key to your room." 

"But someone could steal one of those," Zoë said, pointing to a rack of the bracelets a little behind him. They were bronze-coloured, rather than silvery like ours. 

"Ah, but those don't allow access to the guests' quarters, you see. Only to the public areas." 

"Who uses them?" I felt as if I was missing something. "Day-trippers? We're in deep space. Don't tell me you get coach parties showing up unexpectedly?" 

He smiled at that. "Not as a rule, no. But if someone turns up saying they've lost their proper bracelet, we can let them have one of these while we sort everything out." 

"What would happen if someone waited for a cleaning robot to open the door, and slipped in then?" 

"It's out of the question. The robots are accompanied by a security guard when they're going round the rooms, to make sure that sort of thing doesn't happen." 

"Oh," Zoë said. 

"There, I hope I've set your minds at rest. Is there anything else I can do for you?" 

"Well, yes. Is there a hard-copy guide to the Complex? Something I can take round with me, without having to read it at a terminal?" 

"Yes, there's a souvenir booklet..." 

As soon as Zoë had paid for her guide, she seemed to lose interest in the conversation, and by the time I'd thanked the receptionist for setting our minds at rest she was noticeably fidgeting. She didn't say anything, though, until we'd left the reception area and were on our own in a grav-tube. 

*

"What did you think of him?" she asked. 

"He sounded honest enough," I said. "And pretty sure of himself." 

"Then he's an idiot." 

"Really, Zoë!" 

"You could still do a lot of mischief just with one of those bracelets he had there with him. You'd just have to wait for the desk to be unmanned, and steal one." 

"But why would you want to? If you were staying here, you'd have a bracelet of your own." 

Zoë folded her arms and gave me one of her work-it-out-for-yourself looks. 

I decided to change the subject. "Do you really think it would be that easy to steal a bracelet?" 

"Easier, probably. You remember, when I asked him for that guide, he turned away. I tried reaching, but my arms aren't quite long enough." 

"I noticed," I said. "I wondered if you were doing aerobics." 

"Anyway, someone taller than me could probably do it. And that's what I think of his state-of-the-art security arrangements." 

I reached into my pocket, and pulled out one of the bronze bracelets. 

"While we're on the subject," I said, "I pinched this just now, while you were paying him. He never noticed a thing, and nor did you." 

We exchanged glances, and both burst out laughing. 

*

Zoë had arranged to meet Mr Maranga at a corridor junction near the golf course. Near the junction, there was an alcove, containing a few chairs and a vending machine, so we were able to sit down and at least try to relax. Mr Maranga himself was an imposing figure, even in his golfing clothes. He was tall and burly, with salt-and-pepper hair, and obviously kept himself in good shape. He arrived a couple of minutes before the time we'd agreed. 

"I received your message," he said. "What can I do for you?" 

"We're looking into the death of Mr Eric Warner," Zoë said. "We understand that you may have spoken to him on the night of his death." 

"Yes, I did." He gave us both an appraising look. "You're making an investigation, so I presume there's something suspicious about the way he died?" 

"There could be nothing in it," I said. "But we have been asked..." 

"Answer enough." He nodded slowly. "Yes, we did share a table at dinner last night. Perhaps you suspect me of dropping poison in his drink." 

"Did you?" Zoë asked. 

"Certainly not. But you have only my word for that, of course." 

"Did he take any pills or medicines?" 

"None." 

"And he didn't seem unwell?" 

"When we parted, he seemed completely healthy." 

"What did you talk about?" I asked. 

"We had what I believe is termed a wide-ranging discussion." 

"Was there anything in particular that Mr Warner asked you about?" 

"He seemed interested in how closely we track our spaceships and the cargo they carry. I'm not sure what end he had in mind." 

"Perhaps he wanted to transport something valuable," Zoë suggested. 

"Perhaps. I had the impression, when he made the appointment, that he was trying to sound me out about transporting an illegal cargo." 

"Smuggling?" 

"If you want to call it that. But he didn't propose anything illegal when we met. In all honesty, I couldn't give him the sort of details he seemed to be looking for, even if I'd had them at my fingertips. That sort of information is confidential." 

"How did you come to be dining together?" I asked. "Was it arranged in advance, or did he just show up?" 

"He called me the day before and asked if he could talk to me informally on a matter of business. I couldn't accommodate him then, but suggested that we dine together the next day. It seemed a reasonable enough request." 

"Was that the first time you met him?" 

"It was. At least, it was the first time we'd spoken. We could have bumped into each other before now." 

"Did anything else strike you about him?" I asked. "How did he seem?" 

"He wasn't the sort to give things away. You could talk with him for hours and know nothing more than when you started. To tell you the truth, I didn't particularly care for him. Which doesn't mean, of course, that I wished him any harm." 

"Of course not," Zoë said. "What else did you do yesterday, by the way?" 

"I spent a couple of hours catching up with business – I'm afraid, even on holiday, I have to speak to my office at least once a day, sometimes more. Then I played my usual round of golf with Arthur Pembroke. I'm sure he will confirm that if you ask him. We had lunch together. Then I had a session in a flotation tank, and spent the rest of the afternoon in the solar lounge relaxing. You should be able to find witnesses for both of those without too much difficulty. After dinner, I took a short walk in the park area, and then returned to my room." 

"Did anyone see you?" 

"I couldn't say. The park does not seem to be particularly well patronised." 

"That's about it, then," Zoë said, rising to her feet. "Thank you for your time." 

"Don't mention it. I wish you success with your investigation." 

He shook hands with us, and departed in the direction of the golf course. 

*

"What do you think?" Zoë said. We were heading back in the direction of the grav-tube. 

"About him?" 

"Yes." 

I thought. "Well, he didn't seem put out at the idea of you suspecting him. And he was very open about everything he did yesterday." 

"Yes. We can check a lot of his story, of course. I'll add that to the to-do list. But by his own account, he could have been doing anything after dinner." 

"He'd have to be pretty quick, wouldn't he? If he met Mr Warner for the first time at dinner, and decided to kill him then and there, and managed to pull it off within a couple of hours." 

"If he didn't know him already. We've only got his word that he didn't." 

We walked on in silence for a bit. 

"Of course," Zoë said suddenly, "if there really is an alien artefact somewhere round here, Mr Warner might have found out where it is and have been planning to get it back to Earth in secret." 

"And that's why he was asking Mr Maranga about tracking cargoes and spaceships." 

"Yes." Zoë shrugged. "Anyway, it's getting on for lunch time. I'll try Ms Evans again, and then we'll see what Mr and Mrs Sung have to say." 


	4. Thursday (pm)

"Ah, here we are." Mrs Sung lowered the photo-viewer she'd been looking into. "These are those pictures I was telling you about. Paradise City on Egeria. We went there on a Galactic Travel cruise... or was it Bertram Enterprises? Anyway, that's what a properly-organised holiday should be like." She handed Zoë the viewer across the restaurant table, still talking. "I'm not one to complain, and we've managed to enjoy ourselves this time, but in my opinion this place needs to be sorted out by someone with a bit of grip. Didn't I say so, Hào?" 

Mr Sung, whose chosen rôle in life appeared to be the other half of a Socratic dialogue, said "You did, my dear." 

"That doctor, for a start. I'm sure he didn't believe a word of what I told him. So unlike our own dear Doctor Zhao. And as for this business with the spaceport! If that isn't sorted out by the time we need to go, then the management will be hearing from us, I assure you." 

"The announcement said it would only be for two or three days," Zoë said. She looked her usual calm self, but under the table her feet were fidgeting. Trying to get Mrs Sung to answer questions was like trying to get somewhere by typing random numbers into a T-Mat – you could travel a vast distance, but there was hardly any chance of ending up where you wanted to be. 

"Oh, they say that now, but you just wait. The next thing you hear it'll be a week, then ten days. I was saying only yesterday, to poor Mr Warner, that nobody seems to have any idea of urgency at the moment." 

"That was when you were lunching with him?" Zoë asked, sounding grateful for a chance to drag the conversation back on course. 

"Oh, yes. The poor man! I'd never have thought it. He looked perfectly well. And you say he died the same evening? That's terrible. You never can tell, can you?" 

"How did you come to be sharing a table?" I asked. 

"Oh, I made the arrangements. It seemed like common sense. What with him being practically next door to us, I said we really ought to get to know each other better. 

Zoë put the viewer down sharply. 

"Next door to you?" she said. "Sorry, I hadn't realised that. I suppose you didn't see or hear anything when he returned to his room after dinner?" 

"Not a thing. But I don't think I would have. Say what you like about this place, they do understand soundproofing. Not like that hotel in Russia - you know the one, Hào, where they had those pancakes. Quite inedible! And we were kept awake half the night by those young people in the next room. Talking at all hours, and I don't know what else." She took a deep breath. "But there wasn't anything like that here. That's one thing they've got right. It's a pity they didn't take the same care with the grav-tubes. Why, a couple of days ago my jacket nearly got caught in the doors. I'd have had every penny of it out of the management if it had been damaged, believe you me. And I'm positive that they've skimped on the air recyclers. Didn't I say only the other day I felt the air was too dry? I felt myself choking, I assure you." 

"You say that whenever we're in space, darling," Mr Sung said, with a twinkle in his eye. 

"Do I? Now, Hào, don't exaggerate. I'm not one to complain, but last night I could _not_ get to sleep for hours, and I'm sure it was the air. I don't suppose you could mention it to the management, could you? A word in the right ear could make all the difference." 

Zoë, to whom this last request had been addressed, looked dubious. 

"I could," she said. "I don't know if they'd pay me any more attention than you." 

"Well, if you do get a chance to talk to them, could you mention the grav-tube doors as well? They really shouldn't be that fast. Quite dangerous, as I was saying. I wouldn't be at all surprised to hear there'd been an accident. I was saying only the other day to my Xuë – she's on Luna, you know, in Tycho City, that if people will push and shove and hurry all the time, there'll be trouble sooner or later." She paused for breath, and seemed to notice me. "But here I am, chattering on, and you haven't seen my photos yet! Here you are." 

She pushed the photo viewer in my direction. I raised it to my eyes, and glanced through endless holograms of the Sungs, usually accompanied by half a dozen other tourists, standing under protective domes, with endless vistas of craters, icebergs, lumps of rock, and starscapes in the background. Most of my attention was still on the interrogation, if you could call it that. 

"Mr Warner didn't say anything about what he was doing here?" Zoë asked. 

"No, I don't believe he did. He wasn't a talkative man. But he seemed very interested in hearing about my family, and what I thought of the Complex. Did you know I had to run the tap for three minutes this morning before I got hot water? And even then, it was tepid, positively tepid." 

"Did he say what he planned to do after your meal together?" 

"I don't think he did. Can you remember, Hào?" 

"He didn't," Mr Sung said. "But then, you didn't give him much of a chance, honey." 

"Really! From the way you talk anyone would think I never let anyone get a word in edgewise. Pay no attention to him, my dear, he's a terrible tease." 

"Well," Zoë said. "Thank you for your time." 

"Oh, you can't go yet. I must tell you about the time we visited Mexico City. Can I have the viewer back, please, my dear, just for a second?" 

I handed the viewer to her. She peered into it, searching the index of pictures for the ones she wanted. Zoë glanced at her watch. 

"Are we late?" I whispered to her. 

Zoë shook her head. "We don't have to see Ms Evans for a while yet." 

"Bet you wish we did." 

She gave a half-smile, half-grimace at that. 

*

In the end, we parted from the Sungs only when everyone had to leave the restaurant. That, in itself, wouldn't have stopped Mrs Sung, but it turned out that she was booked for the low-gravity badminton, and we weren't. So we finally said our goodbyes in the restaurant anteroom. 

"We've still got an hour or so before Ms Evans," Zoë said. I hadn't seen her make any notes, so presumably she was holding our entire schedule and everything else in her head. "I think I'd better go and report what we've discovered so far, just in case I get bumped off before this evening. I'll have to do that on my own, I'm afraid." 

"Did you find out anything more about Ms Evans?" I asked. 

"Her first name's Gladys, and she's an antique dealer." Zoë shrugged. "That's it." 

"Alien antiques?" 

"It sounds likely, doesn't it? Anyway, she'll have to wait until after I've made my report." 

"Is there anything you want me to look into while you're doing that?" 

"Oh, all sorts of things. You could check Mr Maranga's story. He was playing golf with a man called Pembroke, wasn't he? Try and get hold of him. And the attendants for the flotation tanks, and the solar lounge." 

I scribbled all this down. 

"See you later, then," I said. "Where are we supposed to meeting Ms Evans?" 

"In the viewing gallery for the swimming pool," Zoë said. "If I don't show up, you know what to do." 

I nodded, hoping fervently that she would show up. 

*

Mr Pembroke, when I got hold of him, looked exactly like you'd expect a deputy sub-secretary in the Bureau for Transport and the Environment to look. In short, he was a plump, fussy civil servant. Despite the fact that he was supposed to be on holiday, he was still wearing the same sort of jumpsuit he'd have worn at the office. It looked about twenty years out of fashion. 

"Oh yes," he said. "Like to have a round of golf with Saul – Maranga, you know – when I can. Nice chap. We were both on the working group for transfer orbit allocation. That's how I got to know him." 

"So you were with him all the time yesterday?" 

"Never took my eyes off him." 

"And today?" 

He chuckled. 

"Ah, you don't catch me out like that, young lady! He left me on my own for what? Ten minutes? A quarter of an hour? And don't pretend you don't know it, because he was talking to you and your friend. He told me about you afterwards. Seemed to think the whole thing was rather far-fetched, ha!" 

"Well, these things have to be looked into." 

"Red tape, eh?" He put a hand on my shoulder. "Though I say it as shouldn't." 

"Insurance companies like to be sure." I pulled out my holograph of Mr Warner. "This was the man who died. Did you speak to him at all?" 

"Him? No. Saw him around, mind you. Thought he looked a bit shifty. Got to be careful in my position, you know." 

"That's all, then. Thank you for your time." 

*

The rest of Mr Maranga's story was pretty easy to confirm. The woman who'd been running the flotation tanks the previous day wasn't on duty, but the computer had recorded Mr Maranga's times in and out. I found out she was on duty the next morning, and made a note to come back then and confirm that it had been Mr Maranga, just in case he'd swapped his bracelet with someone else. 

The steward in the Solar Lounge was even easier, because he knew Mr Maranga by sight. Yes, he'd been in the Lounge between the times we'd been given. Perhaps he might have got up for a minute now and again, but the steward was sure he'd have noticed him leaving or coming back, and he didn't. No, Mr Maranga didn't seem to have been behaving in any way out of the ordinary. 

That left me with some time in hand before our appointment with Ms Evans. For want of anything better to do, I went to the park. As soon as I got there, I could see why it wasn't a very popular part of the Complex. The concept of it was fine – a big cavern, hollowed out of the asteroid, laid out with paths you could walk or cycle along, and planted with grass and trees and so on from Earth. The problem was that it was all too new, probably no more than a couple of years old, so the trees were saplings tied to poles and the flowers were all tiny things in the middle of huge expanses of bare earth. And you were always aware of the cavern walls and roof overhead; it certainly didn't feel anything like being properly outdoors. 

I'm not sure whether I was looking for some sort of proof that Mr Maranga had visited the park the previous evening – perhaps a footprint, or a handkerchief he'd dropped – but I didn't find any. I ended up walking aimlessly around the paths, trying to make sense of what we'd learned so far. If Mr Warner had stumbled across some kind of a plot, it had to be connected to the people he'd talked to that last day. Had he spotted something in Mrs Sung's chatter, or found evidence that Mr Maranga was up to no good? If there was something alien here, who had it? Was it something that you could slip in your pocket, or would it need special transport? Perhaps it was the murder weapon – something that could kill at a distance without leaving a mark. 

The more I thought, the more I was stumped. 


	5. Thursday (pm)

I got to the viewing gallery overlooking the swimming pool a few minutes after Zoë did. Ms Evans was already there, so I didn't get a chance to ask Zoë what she'd been doing, or tell her how I'd got on. 

As for Ms Evans, she wasn't what I'd expected. She was an attractive woman of forty or so, and by her skin and hair I'd have said she came from the South American Zone. I'm not sure quite what my mental picture of an antique dealer had been, but it hadn't been that. 

"Thank you for agreeing to see us," Zoë began. "We're looking into the death of Mr Eric Warner, and we understand you saw him yesterday morning." 

She looked shocked. "He's dead?" 

"I'm afraid so," I said. 

"When did this happen?" 

"Some time yesterday evening." 

Between us, we gave her a brief description of the public facts. 

"I see," she said. "So. He's dead. And you," she pointed at us, "are asking questions about it. Why?" 

"I've been asked to make an investigation," Zoë said. 

"Have you indeed? And do you have any official standing?" 

"You can check with the computer if you like." 

She waved a dismissive hand. "Computers only say what they've been told to. Very well, ask me your questions." 

"You breakfasted with Mr Warner?" Zoë began. 

"Yes." 

"How did that come about?" 

"We'd met the day before." She gave us both careful looks. "A matter of business. Can you promise me you'll keep it confidential?" 

"I can't agree to cover up anything illegal," Zoë said doubtfully. 

Ms Evans shrugged. "Don't worry. Nothing illegal happened. In fact, nothing happened at all. This Mr Warner of yours had heard I might have something he was interested in buying. Well, I didn't." 

"Something of extrasolar origin?" Zoë asked. 

"You mean alien?" For a second, I thought I saw a look of guilt flash across her face, but I couldn't be sure. "I don't deal in that sort of thing. Anyway, we didn't make a deal, but we got on quite well. So we agreed to have breakfast together the next day – yesterday – and then go shooting together." 

"What did you talk about?" 

"All sorts of things. Life. Business. Oh, what does it matter?" 

"It may help us to find out if someone killed him," I said. 

"You? A couple of girls hardly out of the cradle? Don't make me laugh. By your own account, he died on his own and there aren't any suspicious circumstances. You think, if someone's clever enough to set that up, you two can catch him?" 

"You think it's a 'him', then?" Zoë said. 

"Him or her. Don't try to trip me up with words." 

"So, just to be clear, you parted company at eleven-fifteen and did not see Mr Warner again." 

"I didn't tell you that." She narrowed her eyes. "I suppose you've been asking around. Prying into people's personal affairs." 

"And he seemed perfectly well then." 

"Yes, yes, yes. I've told you that already." 

I cleared my throat. I hadn't wanted to interrupt, but I had the feeling that if I didn't there might be some kind of explosion. 

"Did he talk about transport at all?" I asked. 

"Transport?" Ms Evans seemed a little puzzled by the question. "What sort of transport?" 

I shrugged. "I don't know. But he met Saul Maranga later that day – you know, the chief of–" 

"I know." She gave us a positively feral smile. "Cupboard full of skeletons, that man. Reddening his hands in the blood of the innocent when you two were still playing with dolls in the nursery." 

"The thing is," I said, ploughing on as best I could, "we wondered if you had any idea why Mr Warner would want to talk to him." 

"Oh, I can think of many. Find out what he did in the war. There's a lot of old scores need settling." 

"When you say 'he', did you mean Mr Warner or Mr Maranga?" Zoë asked. 

Ms Evans gave her another nasty smile. "Did you have any other questions, girl?" 

"Yes. After you parted company from Mr Warner, what did you do for the rest of the day?" 

"You don't know that already? Don't try to pretend you haven't been sneaking about, asking your impertinent questions of people with no right to answer." 

"I should like to hear your account." 

"You think I'd be stupid enough to lie to you, girl?" She jumped to her feet. "Yes, you think you can catch me in some idiotic logic trap and send me to the Readjustment centre to have my mind scooped out. A nice little end to your case and a promotion and a bonus for you, and who's going to care if it's the truth or not?" 

"I'm not in this for promotion or bonuses," Zoë said, also getting to her feet. I stood as well, though I didn't have any very clear idea of what to do after that. "I intend to form my conclusions based on evidence, and the more evidence you give me, the better." 

"Is that so? Well, you'll get no more evidence from me. You and your half-witted girlfriend can keep your noses out of things that don't concern you, you little spies!" 

With the last word, she slapped Zoë across the face, hard. I'd tried to grab her arm, but she moved so quickly that I was nowhere near in time. Zoë, for her part, took a couple of steps back and dropped into a defensive pose, hands free, balancing on the balls of her feet. 

"Don't worry, girl," Ms Evans said, almost contemptuously. "I'm not going to dirty my hands on you again." 

She swept out, leaving us alone in the gallery. Doubtless if the door hadn't been automatic, she'd have slammed it, but she had to do without that final gesture. 

Zoë lowered her hands, then cautiously touched the red mark on her cheek where she'd been hit. 

"Back in a moment," she said, and darted off in the direction of the Ladies' cloakroom. I found a chair, and more or less collapsed into it. I stared through the glass panel that separated the gallery from the swimming pool, watching the swimmers going up and down the lanes. I felt as if I'd done something terrible, but I wasn't sure what. 

I was still sitting there when Zoë put her hand on my shoulder and said "Are you all right?" 

"I ought to be asking you that," I said, and turned to look at her. I supposed she'd bathed her face in cold water; her hair was clinging damply to her forehead, and her makeup had been washed off, making her look younger and more vulnerable. The red mark on her cheek was still there, but it seemed less pronounced. 

"Don't worry about me," she said. "I've had worse." 

"When?" 

She looked confused for a moment, then focused again. "Oh, in self-defence class. Definitely. Anyway, we can't sit around here all day." 

I looked hard at her again. She looked calmly back. Ms Evans might have hurt Zoë, but she hadn't managed to shake her self-control. 

"Aren't you angry or anything?" I asked. "She did hit you." 

"Oh, furious," Zoë said lightly. "But I've been on courses for that sort of thing." 

"You mean your parapsych training?" 

"That's it. As Ms Evans would put it, I've _had_ my mind scooped out. And put back again, of course, organised properly." 

"She's mad," I said. "Isn't she?" 

"I'm not competent to make that diagnosis. What other conclusions did you draw about her?" 

I tried to force my mind back to the problem at hand. 

"I don't know," I said. "I think she could kill someone, easily. But wouldn't she be more likely to do it face to face, on the spur of the moment? And if she had killed someone, would she be able to keep it secret?" 

"Duly noted. Do you have any suggestions for what we do now?" 

I shook my head. "She said she'd been to the shooting gallery, didn't she? We should go there and check it actually was her." 

"There you are," Zoë said. "Now you're thinking logically." 

*

The shooting gallery turned out to be another area carved out of the rock of the asteroid. Instead of being one large cavern, like the park, it was a network of tunnels, smaller caves, ramps, galleries, and so on, connected by metal walkways. Some bits were made to look like the outside, with artificial vegetation; others were made to resemble factories or spaceships, the sort you only ever see in action videos, with huge rusty machines that don't do anything except blast out steam now and again. Targets would pop up from the vegetation, or the machines, or behind what looked like windows, usually accompanied by recordings of gunfire. The idea was to shoot them before they disappeared again. 

More out of thoroughness than anything else, Zoë and I, once we'd checked Ms Evans's story, booked out a couple of rifles and explored. I'd wondered if she'd had some idea of killing Mr Warner in a shooting accident, but the rifles didn't fire live ammunition. They only shot blanks, and used a laser device to tell if you'd hit the target or not. You could also use an equally harmless version of a hunting blaster, but apparently most guests preferred the rifle. 

"I wonder why they came down here," Zoë said. She wasn't doing too well with the targets, not that either of us cared. Her reactions were good enough to fire at a target before it disappeared, but she tended to shoot too quickly and miss. 

"Perhaps one or other of them enjoyed it," I suggested, more or less automatically. Then another thought struck me. "You could hide all sorts of things here. Maybe that alien thing was hidden in among all this stuff, and they came to pick it up." 

"And he paid her for it, and put it in his pocket. It's a possibility. But he didn't have it when he died." 

"We don't know that. We've only got Doctor Fowler's word that it wasn't in his pocket or somewhere in the room." 

"Yes. Memo to self: Ask Ms Lombardi or Doctor Fowler about any pictures of the room. And contents of the deceased's pockets." She looked around. "Even if the artefact wasn't hidden here, they might have come here to negotiate." 

"Wouldn't you be shouting all the time?" I asked. A trio of targets chose that moment to spring up; the air was filled with the sounds of recorded gunfire. We fired back. I don't think we hit any. 

"Not all the time, only now and again. And with these walkways, everyone's got to keep to quite limited areas. If someone was trying to spy on you, they'd be on the walkway too and you couldn't not notice them. If someone did climb over the fence and hide among the targets, they wouldn't be able to follow you when you went to another room." She smiled suddenly. "Tell you what. I'll try to follow you without you seeing me, and you try to lose me. Then we'll do it the other way round. If I can't find you, I'll be back here in five minutes." 

Ten minutes later, we'd proved, to our satisfaction at least, that it would be almost impossible to eavesdrop on someone in the gallery. What with the noise you'd have to be right on top of them, and as Zoë said, there was no way they wouldn't notice you. 

Once we'd learned all we could there, we headed back to the entrance, handed in our guns, and confirmed that all the weapons there were (a) accounted for, and (b) harmless anyway. 

"Oh yes," Zoë said. "I didn't get a chance to ask before. Did Mr Maranga's story check out?" 

"Mr Pembroke confirms they were golfing together," I said. "And the rest of his story seems to check out, too, though I need to check one point on the flotation tank bit. I couldn't find anyone who saw him in the park. What did the security logs say?" 

"They say he was there. Or at least his bracelet was." Zoë led the way to the grav-tubes, at her usual brisk pace. "I checked on some other points, too. Yes, there's a man who goes round with the robots. And yes, robots do appear on the security log, so I don't think one could have been used to remove evidence from Mr Warner's room. Apart from anything else, they do their rounds in the morning, not the evening." 

By now, we'd reached the grav-tubes, and Zoë had pressed the call button. 

"That's when you found out about Ms Evans?" I asked. 

"That's right. According to the security logs, she was with Mr Warner on the shooting range – which we've checked – and spent the afternoon in the spa – which we haven't, yet. In the evening she went to Rosalie's, and spent a couple of hours there. According to the bill, she was on her own." 

Rosalie's was the Centre's attempt at a vibrant, edgy nightclub. One visit had been enough for me. I think most of its trade came from people who went to laugh at the robotic dancing girls that provided its cabaret. 

"Can we prove she was there?" I asked. 

"Her bracelet was. But she could have left it there for a few minutes and done anything she liked. We'll have to wait till this evening to see if we can talk to someone there. It's annoying." Zoë frowned. "We don't know when the murder was set up, or how, so we don't know which parts of people's stories to double-check." 

The grav-tube chose that moment to open, and we left it at that. 

*

When we stepped out of the grav-tube, we found ourselves in a lobby, with a large double door at one end. 

"Where are we?" I asked, as we approached the doors. 

"The Exhibition Centre," Zoë said. "There's something that I want to look into." 

The doors slid open, and we emerged into a vast open space. It was about three storeys high, and seemed to go on forever, both ahead and to each side. It was difficult to tell, because the floor wasn't just empty space – there were freestanding hexagonal booths, arranged in a regular pattern, which blocked most of the sight lines. This wasn't a cavern like the park or a maze like the shooting gallery. It was a proper room, albeit a very big one. 

I didn't know, and I still don't, where the people who built the Complex thought they were going to get hundreds and hundreds of people to come to exhibitions or conferences. The whole place looked as if it had never been used. Nearly all the booths were just hollow shells, and the ones that weren't were closed off with smoked glass panels. Some of the panels showed moving images - all silent, all meaningless. There was one with a catwalk, I remember, with a five-second loop of the same model walking out and back, over and over again. Another one showed one computer-generated interior after another, all tasteful, modern, minimalist rooms you could never imagine real people in. 

The whole area may have been brand-new, spotless and brightly-lit, but believe me, it felt spooky. 

"What are we doing here?" I whispered. It was the sort of place where whispering came naturally. 

"I did a search in the access recorder logs," Zoë said, in her normal voice. She obviously wasn't getting the same vibes from the giant, deserted hall that I was. "Someone's made a few visits to this part of the Complex recently. Not yesterday, but the last one was the day before." 

"Who?" 

"The bracelet was one of those bronze ones. That's the only information recorded. Now do you see why someone staying here would want one?" 

"It means you don't know who they actually are." 

"Exactly. They'd just go somewhere with a lot of people, wrap their real bracelet in metallic foil or something, put it in their pocket, and then put the bronze one on. Anyway, when I looked at the logs after lunch, I found there was a new entry since this morning. Someone came down here a couple of hours ago, and the system lost track of them." 

"So they're still somewhere near here?" 

"Unless they've made their escape already." 

"And we're going to look for them? Wouldn't they try to kill us?" 

Zoë nodded. "Ideally, we'd want to be out of sight and wait to see if anyone shows up." 

"Why 'ideally'? It sounds like a good enough plan to me." 

"Lily, I could be wrong. We can't just hang around here all day on the off-chance that someone will turn up. Now, it could be that they came down here to hide something." 

"This alien thing? The murder weapon?" 

"Maybe. If we knew what the murder weapon was." 

"It could still be natural causes," I said, but my heart wasn't in it. 


	6. Thursday (pm)

We'd been searching the exhibition centre for what seemed like hours. If there was anything hidden in any of the booths, we hadn't found it. I hoped Zoë was keeping track of which ones we had and hadn't looked in, because after the first half-dozen or so they'd all started to blur together. 

"We could be here for days," I said. "There's still the lecture theatre to do. We'd have to look under all the seats." 

"It's still got to be done," Zoë said. 

"At least let's take a breather." 

There wasn't anywhere to sit on the main floor of the hall, but we'd earlier found a ramp leading up to a gallery, which, as well as the usual empty booths, had cushion-topped cuboids you could sit on. So we went up there and had our breather. 

"I suppose we might as well do up here while we're at it," I said, after we felt a bit more rested. 

There were only a few booths in the gallery, and we didn't take long to search them. But as we came out of one, I heard a clicking noise from somewhere in the back wall of the gallery. I stopped, and so did Zoë. We looked at each other. 

"Are you thinking what I'm thinking?" I said. 

"I don't know what you're thinking. But I think that sounded like a door unlocking." 

I looked down at her wrist. "You said that bracelet had been modified." 

"So it unlocks all doors in the Complex, yes." Zoë ran her hand over the wall. "There must be a door here." 

Once we knew there was a door, it didn't take us too long to find it. All Zoë had to do was move her bracelet to and fro, while I put my ear to the wall to find out where the clicks were coming from. One of the panels – adorned with a picture of a smiling girl holding a robotic cat – slid away when I pushed it firmly. 

The corridor on the other side turned out to be brightly-lit, clean, and completely free of skeletons. It didn't even have the air of detachment from reality that filled the exhibition hall. 

"This really isn't the sort of place you'd expect a secret passage," I said. "Secret passages belong in ruined abbeys or vampires' castles. This is all brand new." 

"I don't think it is secret," Zoë said. "Not in that sense. It's probably just a service tunnel. I dare say it shows up on all the plans and security logs and so on." 

"Oh." I must have sounded rather disappointed. 

"We might as well take a look, though, while we're here." 

She stepped through the door. The corridor ran both ways; we turned right at random and started walking. That led to a dead end after a few tens of metres, so we retraced our footsteps. The other direction kept on going, with gentle corners here and there. We passed other doors now and again, all neatly marked with serial numbers. 

Eventually, we reached another dead end, turned round, and started walking back. We'd got most of the way, when Zoë came to a halt. 

"That door didn't click when we passed it," she said, indicating a perfectly normal-looking door. "All the other ones did." 

She waved her bracelet over it, but nothing happened. 

"Perhaps it's broken," I said. 

"Perhaps. Or perhaps..." Zoë looked down and toyed with her bracelet. "This opens all the doors in the Complex. More accurately, it opens all doors known to the Complex security system. Maybe this door isn't part of the Complex security system." 

We stayed around for a bit to see if we could get the door to open, but nothing we tried worked. In the end, we decided to go and take another look at the security logs. We were a little way away from the door when the whole corridor was filled with a hum, that started off low-pitched and began to rise up the scale. 

"A T-Mat!" I whispered. 

Zoë nodded. 

"But there aren't any here..." 

The hum died away. Then the mysterious door began to slide open. 

We looked this way and that. This was a straight stretch of corridor, and we didn't have any chance of reaching a bend before someone came out of the door. On the other hand, there was another door a few metres away. I pointed at it, and we ran to it as quietly as we could. The lock clicked, and the door began to open. As soon as it was wide enough, I ducked through. Zoë followed, but leaned back so she could see into the corridor. 

"Come on!" I said, keeping my voice as low as I could. 

There was a bright flash, the whine of a blaster, and sparks came off the edge of the door. Zoë jerked back, and let the door slide closed. 

"He had a space suit on," she complained. "I couldn't see who it was." 

"Never mind that," I said. "We're trapped." 

The door had opened onto a tiny metal platform, surrounded by railings, high on the rocky, cliff-like wall of a brightly-lit cavern. Down at the bottom was a river, the light sparkling off its rapids, with a path running alongside. 

"So we are," Zoë said. 

"Can we lock the door and wait till it's safe?" 

"The door unlocks automatically in the presence of this," Zoë said, removing her bracelet. "Which means..." 

She held it out at arm's length over the railings, and let go. It dropped down the cliff, bouncing a couple of times, and came to rest on the path. Behind us, there was a click from the door. 

"There," she said triumphantly. "Locked." 

"And now we're stuck up here." I could hear the panic rising in my own voice. "And he might have a key. What do we do now?" 

"Well, I'll have to go and get my bracelet," Zoë said. "Coming?" 

She swung herself over the railing, caught hold of a protruding lump of rock, and began to scramble down. 

I watched her for a while, with my palms getting damper and the soles of my feet tingling, but she seemed to be managing all right. In the end, I decided that I was more frightened of what might come out of the door than of falling, and climbed down after Zoë. Once I'd got over the railing, it wasn't so terrifying. The cliff sloped slightly rather than being completely vertical, and though the roughness of the rocks made climbing an uncomfortable business, it also meant there were plenty of handholds and footholds. The couple of times I did slip, it was only a metre or so before something broke my fall. Even so, by the time I reached the bottom I was scratched, bruised and shaking all over. 

"I thought you said rock climbing was tame!" I gasped. 

Zoë had already found her bracelet and clipped it back on. "Yes," she said thoughtfully. "That was on the climbing wall here with all the safety gear and ropes and instructors. Climbing for my life down a rockface that wasn't designed for it, without any of that... It felt so much more real." She looked ruefully at what had been her best clothes. "I wish I'd been wearing something more practical, though." 

The exercise had made her look more real, too. All through the day, the plastic coating I'd imagined round her mind seemed to have been wearing away, and now it had completely gone. There was no question now of her looking like a doll or a robot. 

"We'd better go and get cleaned up," I said. 

We set off along the path. 

"You know," I said, after a bit. "If someone had told me a couple of days ago that you'd grown up into someone who'd climb down a rockface without a safety rope, I'd have thought they were joking." 

"I hope you aren't going to psychoanalyse me. I've had quite enough of that, thank you." 

There was a slight edge to her voice, the same tone that she'd used when talking about being given a pointless award with her name on it. I thought it best to change the subject. 

"I wonder where this is?" I said. "I suppose it's part of the Centre, because it's got light and air and gravity." 

"And because this," Zoë tapped her bracelet, "opened the door." 

I looked at the river, and thought. "White-water rafting?" 

"I'd like to try that one day... No, they don't do it here. I asked." 

"Canoeing, then?" 

"Maybe." She produced her souvenir booklet. "Yes, canoeing. Due to open some time next year." 

We walked on. I looked over my shoulder from time to time, but there was no sign of pursuit. 

"Everything we find just seems to make matters more confusing," I said. "How does someone with a T-Mat and a spacesuit fit in?" 

"I don't know," Zoë said simply. 

"Have you come up with any theories yet?" 

"Theories are two a penny. Perhaps Mr Warner bought something from Ms Evans and she thought she'd been cheated. She met him on the way to his room, and gave him a poisoned pill." 

"What, just like that?" 

"The subject could have come up earlier. Say he'd told her he suffered from something minor – you know, headaches or stiff joints or indigestion. She could give him the pill and say it had done wonders for her. And then she'd hurry off to Rosalie's to establish an alibi." 

"Or it could have been Mr Maranga," I said. "Perhaps Mr Warner asked him about transporting whatever he'd bought back to Earth. Then Maranga gives him the poison, or even puts it in his drink there and then." 

"That wouldn't help him," Zoë said. "The artefact would still be under lock and bracelet in Mr Warner's room." 

"Yes, but suppose his plan was to be there when the body was discovered. He could have planned to go there the next morning and find he couldn't get in. Then he could have got hold of that boy on reception to open the door for him, and pick up the goods while he wasn't looking." 

"And whichever one of them it was, they then brought whatever the object was down here to hide it. Somewhere behind a locked door, at the other end of a T-Mat link, where you need a space suit." Zoë snapped her fingers. "Then when the proper detectives show up, they can't find anything. And even if they catch the murderer, an accomplice can retrieve the artefact later." 

"That's brilliant, Zoë." 

Zoë shook her head. "No, it's useless. It doesn't tell us who the murderer is, and we haven't got any proof of anything. The one thing everyone seems to agree on is there wasn't even an alien artefact in the first place." 

"Ms Evans said that. She could be lying." 

"Annoying, isn't it? If there was an artefact, she'd say there wasn't, because she'd want to keep it secret. And if there wasn't, she'd say there wasn't, because there wasn't." 

"So where does that leave us?" 

"Where we started. You haven't made out a case against the Sungs yet, by the way." 

"Why should they...?" 

"I don't know. Perhaps they're really drug runners, and Mr Warner had caught on to whatever they were doing." 

"He wouldn't take a pill from them if he thought they were drug runners." 

"No. So the method would have to be different. Let's say they used a secret passage from their room to his to creep in and suffocate him while his back was turned." 

"What secret passage?" 

"I don't know." Zoë shrugged. "I just invented it." 

By now, we'd reached the end of the river. There was an area of flat rock, littered with construction equipment, and beyond that a door which presumably led back to the rest of the Complex. We both headed that way. 


	7. Thursday (pm)

By the time we'd got back from the underground river area, cleaned ourselves up, and changed our clothes, we were getting hungry. Zoë had briefly disappeared to make a call, and I wasn't entirely surprised when, on her return, she said she'd booked us a table at Rosalie's. 

"I hope you can put up with the dancing robots," she said, positively sparkling with amusement. 

"You're enjoying this, aren't you?" I asked. 

"Of course I am. It's the nearest thing to a date I've been on for months... sorry, that was tactless of me." 

"No, it's all right." It was, too. We'd been so busy today that I hadn't had time to think of my broken heart. "Do we pretend to be a couple?" 

"Oh, I don't think there's any need to go that far. Just a girls' night out." 

"Shouldn't we have some more girls for that?" 

Zoë grinned. "We'll just have to make do with what we've got." 

*

I'd been to Rosalie's before, so I knew what to expect. It looked as if it had been purchased as a kit, staff and all, from some company that sent its spies to genuinely popular nightclubs and then tried to make copies on the cheap. In a university like Luna-L4, it might have stood a chance of fitting in, particularly if the drinks were subsidised. Out here, it didn't have a hope. And the music they were playing was a knockoff of the sort of abstechno that had been popular five years ago – almost certainly computer-generated, to save on the royalties, and to make quite sure that none of it would be worth listening to. 

"What are you having?" I asked, glancing down the list of drinks. 

"Anything as long as it isn't alcoholic," Zoë said firmly. 

"You're not teetotal, are you? No, you didn't have any objection to the house white last night." 

"Last night was before all this business started. If I drank alcohol now, it might impair the functioning of my brain." 

"Impair your brain, indeed. A glass of wine won't hurt." 

Zoë gave me as stern a look as she could. I could see there was no point in arguing. 

*

"What do you think?" Zoë asked me suddenly, halfway into her second glass of definitely non-alcoholic fizzy wine. 

"About what?" 

"About how we've done today." 

"Well," I said. "There's obviously something going on. All that business with whoever it was in the spacesuit. If we tell the people in authority about it, would that convince them the death was a murder?" 

"I doubt it," Zoë said. "We can't prove a connection between the two. And I don't think we should tell anyone here about what we saw this afternoon." 

"What? Not even the head of security?" 

"Especially not her. What if she's involved?" 

"Why would she be?" 

Zoë shrugged. "I don't have a motive or anything for her. But if she was, she could delete entries from the security logs or remove any evidence she liked from Mr Warner's room. For all I know, she was the person in the spacesuit." 

"Are you sure it isn't just because you want to solve this all by yourself?" I asked. 

"I do, of course," Zoë said. "But I try not to let it spoil my judgement." 

"Then you've got to tell her. That T-Mat could lead anywhere." 

"Yes." 

"So you will talk to her?" 

"No. I have talked to her. I just asked her to lock down all the doors leading to that passage. If she's honest, that'll stop anyone going down there and getting up to mischief. And if she isn't, she doesn't know what, if anything, we saw down there." 

We fell silent briefly, while the waitress brought us our meals. 

"Excuse me," I said to her. "Were you on duty yesterday evening?" 

"Ah was," she said. I wasn't sure what accent she was aiming at – it sounded as if she'd thrown a handful of darts at a map of Earth, and taken an average of how people spoke at all those places. Perhaps it was meant to sound exotic, but I found it plain weird. 

"There was someone here yesterday. I don't know if you'd remember her. She was – what would you say, Zoë? Forty?" 

"About that," Zoë added. "Black hair, light brown skin. One-eighty centimetres high or so." 

"And she's got a pretty fierce temper," I concluded. 

"Yes," the waitress said. "Zis person was, how do you say–" 

"You needn't do the accent if you don't want to," I said hastily. 

"Thanks." Her natural voice sounded similar to Zoë's – clear, precise, and probably trained in elocution by a computer. "It's hard enough keeping it up when you don't have to concentrate on what you're saying. This woman you're talking about. I remember her, all right. I think she came here to meet someone, and got stood up. She was sitting over there, in that alcove. Kept looking round the whole time. In the end she threw her drink across the room and stormed out. I didn't see her after that." 

"You didn't notice if she left her table earlier on?" 

"I don't remember. Don't think she did, but I couldn't swear to it." 

"Thank you, then. Can I have your name, for the record?" 

"Ivana Croft." The waitress looked uneasy. "What's all this about?" 

Zoë hesitated. I stepped in. 

"We're trying to trace a master thief," I said. "The Phantom. There's a chance this woman might be involved with fencing his ill-gotten gains." 

"Really?" Ivana's eyes opened very wide. 

"Oh, yes. Of course, this is all in the strictest confidence." 

Ivana nodded fervently, one finger to her lips. 

"Is there anything else you noticed about the woman you saw?" Zoë asked. 

Despite Ivana scouring her mind, there wasn't anything of substance she could come up with. We watched her walk slowly away. 

"Hope she doesn't forget her accent next time someone talks to her," I said. 

"If she does, it'll be your fault," Zoë replied, between mouthfuls of spaghetti. "She's got her head full of the mysterious Phantom. I suppose he's wanted in seven countries and three space colonies? And he steals diamonds as big as my fist, and leaves romantic gifts in ladies' bedrooms?" 

"I had to say something. You were just sitting there like a lemon." 

"I know." Zoë shook her head. "I'm hopeless at lying – or any form of deception." 

*

When we finally left Rosalie's, it was pretty late. I was yawning most of the way down the corridor. 

"Have we got any plans for tomorrow?" I asked. 

"We'll have to check with our suspects again. See what they were doing this afternoon." 

"You do think it was one of them we saw in that spacesuit?" 

"Probably. I'll have to go through the logs again and see if Mr Warner talked to anyone else. And then there are all those other things we need to look into... Lily, can I ask you for a favour?" 

"What?" 

"You know last night you offered to let me stay in your room?" 

"Of course." 

"Would you mind if we did that tonight? Whoever that was in the spacesuit, they tried to kill me. I think we'd be safer together." 

"Definitely." 

"Thank you. Let's call at my room and I'll pick up my pyjamas and things." 

Once we'd got hold of Zoë's pyjamas and clothes and sponge bag, we headed for my suite. 

"Should we barricade the door?" I asked. 

"In theory, it wouldn't make any difference. The logs say no-one opened Mr Warner's door except him: he died alone." 

"In practice?" 

"Help me get this access panel open." 

Once we'd got at the door mechanism, we managed to wedge it with one of my running shoes. Then we got the two halves of my bed separated, and shared out the bedding. 

"Are you ready to go to bed?" I asked. 

"Not yet. I've got to make another report, and then I want to do some more research. Turn in if you want. I'll try not to make a noise, at least while I'm awake." 

"More research?" 

"Yes. On the people we've met today. I'm..." She paused, as if trying to pin down her emotions. "Worried, I think." 

"Of course you're worried. Someone tried to kill you." 

She gestured impatiently. "Not about that. I'm worried that I might not work this thing out in time. It'll be so annoying if it turns out I could have done something and didn't. Good night, Lily." 

I don't know what time she ended up going to bed, and if she did talk in her sleep I didn't hear it. 


	8. Friday (am)

When I woke the next morning Zoë was already up, dressed, and communing with the computer terminal. 

"I don't know if you noticed," she said, without preliminary. "But we didn't find out what Mr Warner was doing the afternoon that he died." 

I thought back. "You're right. He went shooting, then he had lunch with the Sungs, and then nothing until dinner." 

"And he didn't tell the Sungs where he was going." 

"Would you?" I asked. 

Zoë was looking away from me, but it sounded as if she was smiling. "Only if I wanted everyone on the asteroid to know." 

"What about the security logs? Don't they show anything?" 

"It's confusing." Zoë shut the screen down and turned to face me. "He went down to the spaceport, and disappeared off the system. Then a couple of hours later, he showed up again in reception." 

"The spaceport? Do you think he went out in space?" 

"In theory, yes, but I don't think it's likely. There were two launches during that period. One was a supply ship heading back to Ceres, so it wasn't that. And the other was just a short-range pod that takes people to Goldenrock Crater and back." 

"So he could have gone to Goldenrock Crater?" 

"He could, but he'd have had to hang around in the spaceport for an hour. And why would he want to go there? It's just a load of pyrite crystals. You can't even get out of the pod and walk around." 

"You've been there, then?" 

Zoë nodded. "On my first day here. But whether he went on the trip or not, he was poking around in the spaceport. Four: Investigate that point." 

"So if that's Four, what are One, Two and Three?" I racked my brains. "Ask our suspects what they were doing yesterday afternoon, I suppose." 

"That's One. Two is to find out just what you can hide on one of those service robots. And Three is to find out if Mr Maranga really was in a flotation tank, as he said." 

"Fine," I said. "But I hope you've remembered to order breakfast first. Maybe you can do all this on an empty stomach, but I can't." 

*

Our first stop after breakfast was the chapel, which was where Ms Evans had insisted on meeting us. It was tucked away at the far end of a low-traffic corridor, where you wouldn't go unless you had a good reason. 

When we got there, we found it looked brand new and spotlessly clean, even compared to the rest of the Complex. Only the altar at one end and a few stained-glass windows showed that this wasn't a spare lecture room. They weren't even real windows, just panels illuminated from behind. The place didn't feel eerily deserted like the Exhibition Centre, but very quiet and isolated all the same. 

When we arrived, Ms Evans was already there, sitting at the back with her hands in her lap. 

"You wanted to talk to me again?" she said. She sounded tired, and much less inclined to shout or make unprovoked attacks than she had yesterday. 

"We're sorry," I said. "But when we ask questions, we get answers, and then from those answers we end up with a whole lot of new questions. So could you please tell us what you did yesterday afternoon, after we parted?" 

"'Parted'," she repeated sardonically. "After I stormed out, you mean. I went back to my room to try to calm down. Then I went swimming." 

"Can you give us times?" Zoë asked. 

Ms Evans shook her head. "I don't know how long I was in my room. I lay down for a while; I may have slept. I just can't tell you. Was that all?" 

"No. Yesterday you said Mr Maranga had skeletons in his cupboard. Could you tell us anything more about that?" 

"If you're half as bright as you think you are, you've looked into his background already. Haven't you?" 

Zoë nodded. "He started as a transport pilot, served in the war, became a junior partner in Solar Logistics – then a comparatively small operation – and has been with the company since." 

"That's what his company says. That's what the newscasts say. That's how history will remember him, when it's written. Why waste your time listening to what really happened? No-one's going to be interested. What if he bribed his way to contracts or nobbled his competitors? They'll just cheer him all the louder. 'A good businessman', they'll say. 'All's fair in love and war'." 

"Yesterday you mentioned blood on his hands," Zoë said. "Are you suggesting he killed a business rival?" 

Ms Evans shook her head. 

"Really? I wondered if you were going to tell me something about a man called Ronald Garcia." 

"Like I said, half as bright as you think you are, girl. There's no mystery about Garcia. His firm lost the contract for the Eureka supply run to Solar Logistics and went bust. Garcia drank himself to death. Oh, I dare say Maranga pulled strings to get the contract, but there's worse on his conscience than that. If that man has a conscience at all." 

"Then what do you know?" 

"Know? I've told you. Everyone knows Maranga's a hero of industry. How could I know anything different?" 

Zoë clenched her fists. "Please will you stop dropping hints and actually tell me something? You're just wasting everyone's time." 

"I don't have to tell _you_ anything. The police, maybe, but not a couple of girls playing at detective. Was that all?" 

Zoë tried asking again, several times, but whatever Ms Evans knew or guessed, she wasn't saying. 

"I suppose we'll have to leave it there," she said. 

"Can I ask a question?" I said. "Were you and Mr Warner... close?" 

Ms Evans appeared to regain some of her fire at that. 

"Impertinent girl," she said. "What's that to you?" 

"Well, if you were, that would explain why you were so upset yesterday." 

"It would also be an excellent motive in the case you're trying to construct against me, wouldn't it? A crime of passion. A jealous lover. I would suggest that next time you try to frame someone, you're more subtle about it." 

She rose to her feet. 

"It would be best if you left now," she said. "Otherwise I might do something I would later regret. And if you want to talk to me again, I suggest you come back with better questions." 

She walked pointedly to the altar, knelt down before it, and assumed an attitude of prayer. We looked at each other; then Zoë shrugged, and led the way out of the room. 

*

"I'll check with the logs," Zoë said, once we were out of earshot. "But if you go swimming, you aren't wearing your bracelet. It's in a locker. So unless there was an attendant at the pool, we can't prove she was actually there." 

"What was all that stuff about– who was it– Mr Garcia?" I asked. 

"I ran a search on Telepress articles about Mr Maranga. One of them mentioned Mr Garcia's death. I wondered if that's what Ms Evans was dropping hints about." She shrugged. "Looks like it wasn't. I wish she'd just come out and tell me whatever it is she knows or suspects." 

"I think she suspects a lot more than she knows. She probably comes up with stuff like that about everyone. I daresay by lunchtime she'll be telling whoever she's eating with that you and I are tools of an insidious government conspiracy to oppress her." I shook my head. "It's funny. Here I am, supposed to be the one with good people skills. And I'm the one who got her so riled she wouldn't speak to us any more." 

"Perhaps when she's calmed down she'll be more reasonable. I could ask her again later today." 

"If you do, I bet you she'll say she's already told you once and won't do it again." 

Zoë smiled. "I don't bet." 

*

By comparison, Mr Maranga was an open book. We called him from the comms panel in my room. 

"My movements aren't a secret," he said. "I was playing 3-D squash yesterday afternoon from sixteen to seventeen." 

"Were you with anyone, or practising on your own?" Zoë asked. 

"Oh, Pembroke was there if you need confirmation." 

"Thank you. Can I ask you something else?" 

"Of course." 

"You don't know a Gladys Evans?" Zoë described her. "She's another guest here." 

"I don't think so. Why?" 

"She seems to have some sort of grudge against you. I wondered if you had any idea why that would be?" 

"I can think of a hundred reasons. Perhaps she was married to a worker who was laid off, or who was killed in an accident. Maybe she invested all her money with one of my rivals." He shrugged. "I run a large business. Every day I make choices, and sometimes those choices hurt people. These things cannot be avoided." 

"I suppose so," Zoë said, sounding rather dissatisfied. 

"Thank you for your time," I added, and we signed off. 


	9. Friday (am)

"At least Maranga's got an alibi for yesterday afternoon," I said, as we walked down the spiral in the atrium. "It couldn't have been him in the spacesuit. I'll ask Mr. Pembroke, but he's sure to back the story up." 

"It's not exactly watertight, though," Zoë said. "All he has to do is make up a story and agree it with Pembroke. Then Pembroke goes to the squash courts with both their bracelets and establishes the alibi. I'll check the security logs, of course." 

"Or he could have hired someone to go down there," I suggested. "He's rich." 

"Yes, but who would he hire? It isn't as if there's a vast supply of suitable people out here." 

"There wouldn't have to be a vast supply. He'd only need one. Perhaps someone he brought with him." 

"Noted," Zoë said. We reached the bottom of the ramp, and headed through a door marked STAFF ONLY. Beyond it was a corridor, lit with bare fluorescent tubes and devoid of any decoration. 

"Where are we going?" I asked. 

"The robot depot – you know, where the robots go after they've done people's rooms. It's somewhere along here." 

Fifty or so metres along the corridor, we arrived at a double door marked DEPOT. Zoë waved her bracelet in front of it, and it opened. The room beyond was a large, windowless space, with the same harsh lighting as the corridor. The robotic trollies were lined up along one side of the room, standing in parking bays that were separated by rubber bollards. A conveyor belt ran across the back wall, and on the other side was a workshop area, where a technician appeared to be analysing a circuit board with the aid of a couple of handheld probes. She looked up as we entered. 

"Oh," she said. "Can I help you?" 

"We're sorry to disturb you," I said. "This is Doctor Zoë Heriot, and I'm Lily Carson. We're investigators." 

For a moment, I actually believed it, too – that this was our real job, not just a one-off I'd been dragged into until the proper detective showed up. 

"You can check our credentials on the computer," Zoë added. 

"Natasha Meher." The technician gave us both a wary look. "What do you need to know?" 

Zoë rattled off the usual story about Mr Warner's death, and then, as usual, came straight to the point. 

"Could a person hide on one of these robots?" 

"I think it's unlikely," Ms Meher said. "Do you want to try?" 

She pressed a few buttons on a control panel, and one of the robots glided out into the middle of the room. Then we tried various ways of concealing Zoë (since she was the smallest of the three of us) on board. 

We started with having her lie on top of the robot and covering her with bedding. It didn't work at all. Anyone with half an eye could have seen there was a person under there. Then we tried seeing if she could hang onto the bottom of the trolley. That was slightly more practical, in that someone Zoë's size could just about fit between the mechanism and the floor. She'd have had to hang on for dear life, though, or be dragged around; and you couldn't get in there without shutting the trolley down and removing all sorts of components. 

By the time we'd finished, Zoë was flushed and her hair was a mess, but she was still methodically working through her checklist. 

"How, exactly, are the supplies managed?" she asked. "I mean, when the robots are out there doing their rounds, they've got all sorts of bottles and boxes on board. Where do those come from?" 

Ms Meher indicated the conveyor belt. 

"They load from there," she said. "The supplies are all kept in an automated storage system. The robots pick up a standard load and use it to replenish supplies in the rooms." 

"What if someone wanted to put something into a particular room, or take something away? Not a person, but smaller – perhaps this size?" Zoë held her hands apart, indicating something about as big as a grapefruit. 

"Tricky. You wouldn't know in advance which room something was going to end up in. You could swap a packet of coffee, for instance, but depending on whether the people in room 302 had had coffee the night before, you couldn't be sure whether the one you'd swapped would end up in room 302, 303 or 304." 

"Could you do it with a custom program?" 

" _I_ could, but I haven't done anything like that, and I'm probably the only person here who knows the systems in enough detail. And no-one else would have that level of access to the robots. You'd need to study one for some time to prepare the program." 

"Would you? Suppose you prepared the program in advance." 

"That's a thought. You'd still need the knowledge, of course, and a suitable program cartridge." 

"I'd like to try that," Zoë said. "A proof of concept would be something. Can I use your workstation?" 

"I suppose so." 

"Thank you." She pretty much ran over to the computer on the workbench. "Now, let's see. Override standard behaviour triggered by current location..." 

I coughed. "Are you going to be doing this for some time?" 

"I think so, yes." 

"Then I thought I might check up on that point from yesterday about Mr Maranga. You know, when he said he was in the flotation tank?" 

"Good idea. See you later." She seemed to dismiss me from her mind. "Now, obviously we need to bypass some sort of authorisation check, and whatever security protocols this thing uses..." 

I left the two of them to it, and headed back to the public areas of the Complex. I'd worried that without Zoë's master key I wouldn't be able to get through the door at the end of the corridor, but it had a button on the staff-only side that opened it. 

Once I'd got past there, I took the grav-tube to the isolation tank area and spoke to the attendant. She confirmed Mr Maranga's story about booking a tank on the afternoon of the murder – if it was a murder – and assured me that it was Mr Maranga, rather than some impostor, who'd shown up. 

I didn't think Zoë would have finished playing with the robot yet, so I went to the swimming pool and the squash courts, to try and check up on what Ms Evans and Mr Maranga had told us that morning. In the case of Mr Maranga, I got a vague recollection that he'd been there for at least some of the time he said; and Mr Pembroke, when I called him, backed up the story as well. Nobody remembered seeing Ms Evans at the swimming pool, but that didn't really help either way. 

When I'd run out of people to badger, I made my way back to the robot maintenance area. The door wouldn't open for me, so I had to call Zoë and ask her to let me in. When she appeared, she had a broad grin on her face. 

"Watch this," she said, and pretty much dragged me down the corridor to the depot. One of the robotic trollies was standing in the middle of the room, with a few cardboard boxes on top representing its cargo. 

"Can we run it one more time?" she asked. 

Ms Meher, who looked a little shell-shocked, nodded and pressed a few keys on her computer terminal. The trolley began to move at a slow walking pace, circling the empty area. 

"This represents the robot's normal rounds," Zoë said triumphantly. "When they're actually going into someone's room, there's a guard standing outside. But the guard only joins the robot when it's outside the first room, so while it's on the way to the accommodation areas from here it's vulnerable." 

She picked up a small, square object from the workbench. 

"In particular," she said, walking alongside the trolley and matching its pace, "it's vulnerable to this." 

In one swift move, she opened a flap on the side of the trolley, revealing a number of sockets. She plugged the device she was holding into one of these, counted quickly to five, and unplugged it again. 

"There you are," she said. "Now watch." 

The trolley continued on its circuit of the room, until it reached the workbench. There it came to a stop, beeped three times, and started moving again. 

Zoë beamed in triumph. "What do you think of that? It's just a proof of concept, of course. I've only had time to make it beep when it gets to a particular place. I daresay given a bit more time I can make it steal things as well. But the principle's sound. And my program deleted itself afterwards, so if Natasha were to examine the robot now, she wouldn't notice anything out of the ordinary." 

"Are you going to stay and make those changes?" Ms Meher asked, looking quite worried at the prospect. 

"I think I ought to." 

"I don't," I said. I had a feeling that Zoë might be enjoying herself a little too much, and if left to her own devices she'd be down there the rest of the day programming the robots to dance or play ping-pong. "We've still got a lot of other things to look into." 

"I suppose you're right." She put the cartridge in her trouser pocket, and seemed to come down from wherever she'd been orbiting. She looked at her hands, apparently realising for the first time that they still had dirt and grease on them from when she'd been poking around in the works of the trolley. 

"Excuse me," she said. "I need to wash." 

The moment she'd gone, Ms Meher shut the robot down and then collapsed into her chair, looking as if she'd just run a marathon. 

"How do you put up with her?" she asked. 

"I'm sorry?" 

"Perhaps you've known her so long you're used to it. Or did she just drink a litre of coffee this morning?" 

"I certainly haven't known her for very long," I said. "We were at the same school, but we didn't keep in touch. We only met again–" I'd been going to say 'a couple of days ago', but decided to keep it vague. "Quite recently. Why, what did she do?" 

Ms Meher took a deep breath. "What she did was get me to teach her how to reprogram one of those things. Then she went ahead and did it, just like that. And she started finding bugs that had been there for years. I couldn't keep up with her half the time." 

"Well, she did say she'd done parapsych training." 

"Really? She doesn't look it. Not nearly enough, you know..." She pulled a solemn, emotionless face by way of illustration. 

"I know what you mean. She was like that yesterday morning. All calm and logical." 

"Logical, I'll grant you." 

It was at this point that the door opened and Zoë came in, looking reasonably self-possessed. 

"I think that's it for now," she said. "Thank you for your time, Natasha." 

"No problem." Ms Meher ushered us firmly to the door. "Glad I could help." 

"You made quite an impression there," I said, as we walked down the corridor. We were heading away from the public areas of the Complex, but I assumed Zoë had somewhere else to visit. "I didn't know you were such a programming genius." 

"It wasn't that hard," Zoë said. "The programming's designed to be easily modified. The trickiest bit was making the override take effect just by plugging the cartridge in – oh, and getting the program to delete itself afterwards." She fell silent for a few minutes, and added, matter-of-factly, "Anyway, by several objective measures, I _am_ a genius." 


	10. Friday (am)

"Lily, what am I not thinking of?" Zoë said abruptly. 

We were still in the harshly-lit, windowless underworld of the Complex, this time in a workshop that looked as if it hadn't seen serious use since the Complex was first built. In front of us, spread out in pieces, were a locking mechanism of the type used throughout the Complex, and one of the bracelets that operated it. For the last half-hour, Zoë had been manipulating the lock with a view to picking it, and had got absolutely nowhere. 

"What do you mean?" I asked. "There must be all sorts of things you're not thinking of." 

She gestured impatiently. "I mean in this investigation. We keep looking at Mr Maranga and Ms Evans and trying to pin their alibis down. But there are hundreds of people staying here. What if it's one of them?" 

"Wouldn't someone have seen them with Mr Warner? Or would there have been some trace in the security logs? Or in his notes?" 

"That's the point. We've thought of those ways of finding out. What ways haven't we thought of?" 

I closed my eyes and tried to think of what I hadn't thought of. It didn't produce any results, except a headache. 

"How are you getting on with the lock?" I asked. 

Zoë slumped in her chair. "Hopeless. There's an emergency manual override, or you could just laser or torch your way through. But you couldn't do any of them without leaving traces. The door would still know it had been forced. There are three independent systems you'd have to disable at the same time, to within microseconds." 

"So no-one broke into Mr Warner's room that evening." 

"Not through the door. That's as certain as anything can be." She started reassembling the lock, without looking at it. "We still need to look at the floor plans and find out if there's another way in. It's maddening. A day and a half and I can't rule the simplest things in or out." 

"What about what you were doing with the robot?" I asked. "Doesn't that help at all?" 

"It only proves someone could have put something in Mr Warner's room. It doesn't prove they did. And if they did, we don't know what it was. We should take another look at the imagery from the crime scene." 

"Another look?" 

"Oh, of course. You weren't with me at the time. I might have to do that on my own, if Ms Lombardi's still being security-conscious. I think the only other line of enquiry we've got left is finding out what Mr Warner was doing in the spaceport." 

She pushed the last few components of the lock home. Her bracelet beeped. 

"Hang on," she said. "I'll get that." 

She crossed to the comms panel, brought up various screens, and came back looking puzzled. 

"No-one called me," she said. "Why did the bracelet go off?" 

"It must be something with that lock. When you put it back together." 

Zoë returned to the table and picked the lock up. 

"Oh, this bit's upside-down. Stupid of me." She pulled the lock apart, and set about reassembling it, this time looking at what she was doing. "It must have short-circuited the radio beacon. Yes, that's it." 

"And that triggered the bracelet?" 

"Yes. The beacon would have broadcast on all frequencies." 

"It didn't set mine off." 

"No, there isn't enough power to give it more than a few centimetres of range." She snapped the lock back together, and set it down on the workbench. "Another distraction." 

"Perhaps we should get some lunch," I suggested. 

"Do you ever think of anything but food?" Zoë asked, with a note of frustration in her voice. 

"You won't solve anything if you keel over from lack of nutrition." 

"Digestion diverts the blood supply from the brain. My brain needs all the blood it can get at the moment." 

I gave that line of argument up as a lost cause. "Is there anything more you can do here?" 

Zoë gave the objects on the workbench a malign look. "Nothing." 

"Then let's find something else to do." A thought struck me. "You know yesterday? That person in the spacesuit?" 

"Of course I remember it." 

"Couldn't we try to track down the suit? They're not the sort of thing people bring here in their luggage." 

"That's a good point." Zoë jumped to her feet. "I didn't see a serial number or anything. But I remember it had a big green circle – here." She pointed at her chest. 

"Does that booklet of yours say where we'd go for spacesuits?" 

"I'll check. If it doesn't, we'll just have to ask at reception. Let's go." 

*

The Complex supported several activities that required the use of a spacesuit. For efficiency's sake, they were all based in or around the space terminal. We arrived at the moon-buggy racetrack more or less at random. 

The procedure seemed to be that, after queueing for ages, you found yourself in a cubicle, with a large alcove in one wall, tastefully lined with black plastic and little lights representing stars. Putting your bracelet in a tray would cause an empty spacesuit to be hoisted into position in the alcove. Then you stepped in, and the suit would self-test and pressurise. Another door on the far side of the cubicle would then open, taking you to the airlock, and thence to whatever activity you wanted. When you came back, the process would be reversed. 

We worked this out from reading the safety instructions, because when Zoë tried to follow the procedure, the cubicle wasn't having any. 

"Doctor Zoë Heriot," it said in a monotonous synthesized voice. "Your booking for this activity was: Yesterday, at. Eleven. Hundred hours. To make a new booking, please contact your tour representative." 

I tried too, with no more luck. We had to settle for standing in a viewing gallery and watching the buggies drive around in circles, throwing up dust. 

"I don't think I'd have enjoyed it," Zoë said. "It doesn't look as if they're allowed to compete at all. Just drive round and round and round." 

"Not racing at all, then." 

"Not what I'd call racing. Anyway, at least we know what the green circle was for." 

I nodded. All the spacesuited figures on the track had simple, brightly- coloured symbols on their chests. I hadn't thought about it before, but with their faces concealed by visors, it made sense. You had to be able to tell them apart somehow. 

"There's someone with a red circle there," I said. "And a blue one." 

We watched for a bit, trying to come up with all the combinations of colours and shapes. There didn't seem to be any system in play; we saw seven different colours of diamond, but only one triangle. And we didn't see anyone with a green circle. 

"They won't have all the suits out, I suppose," I said. "Depending how many people show up, there'll be a lot more in storage." 

"Yes," Zoë said absently. 

"I don't see how you could steal one like this. You'd lose your bracelet." 

"No, you'd have to get it from the central store somehow." Zoë checked her brochure again. "It must be on the floor below." 

*

Zoë's master key got us into the suit store easily enough. Like the cubicles above, the whole operation was automated; the chamber was criscrossed by overhead gantries, conveying spacesuits of different sizes to and from the hoists that led to the cubicles above. 

"Of course, you couldn't put a suit straight back on the rack," Zoë said, pointing at one of the gantries. "You'd need to clean it, empty the waste tanks, refill the oxygen, replace the liner and so on." 

"What about leaks?" I asked. "And I don't mean anything to do with the waste tanks, thank you very much." 

Zoë managed a reluctant smile. "Let's say 'punctures' rather than 'leaks', just to be clear." 

"Anyway, the suits would have to be tested, wouldn't they? What do they do with the ones that aren't airtight?" 

We quickly got our answer. Near the door was a rack with half-a-dozen spacesuits on it. Each had a printed label, saying what part of the test process it had failed. 

"That's easy, isn't it?" Zoë said. "If you want a suit, you come here and find a damaged one, with a fault you can repair. If it's got a locating beacon, switch it off. Then you walk off with it. Unless someone did a full inventory, no-one would notice a thing." 

"You can't just walk off with a spacesuit under your arm. People would notice." I thought. "I suppose you could take it apart and smuggle the bits out one at a time." 

"Or get a big enough crate, box it up, and reprogram a robot to deliver it to where you wanted." Zoë looked around. "I'll check the security logs to see who's been here, but the suit could have been stolen ages ago. Whatever's going on, I've got a feeling it's all been planned carefully." She spread her hands. "I don't like relying on instincts, but at the moment they're all I've got." 

"But Mr Warner's death couldn't have been some long-drawn-out plan. He was only here for a few days." 

"Whoever's behind this could have had a sort of outline murder plan, though. Ready to go at a moment's notice." She pulled the cartridge she'd used on the robot out of her pocket again. "Like this. It would take hours and hours of work to prepare it. But once it is prepared, when you want to use it you just give it the last few details and there you are." 

"So whoever's behind this had a prepared murder plan set up on the off-chance that they might need to kill someone behind a locked door leaving no evidence?" 

"If I'm right." 

"And you think you can track them down? Won't they have a plan to deal with you as well?" 

"I don't know," Zoë said. "We'll have to watch out in case they do use it against us." 

"Us," I repeated hollowly. 

"I'm afraid so. We're in this together, after all." She glanced at her watch. "You said something about lunch a little while ago." 

"I think I've just lost my appetite," I said. 


	11. Friday (pm)

Lunch was a trial. All the food tasted slightly funny, and I kept wondering if it was a fault in the kitchen, or something that had always been there that I'd only just noticed, or whether I was imagining the whole thing. I kept telling myself that it couldn't be poison – not unless the murderer wanted to wipe out everyone in the restaurant. 

If that wasn't enough, we had to share a table with the Sungs again; we'd arrived late, and space was at a premium. Mrs Sung divided her conversation between a long tale of when she'd stayed in a holiday cottage in Indonesia and the automatic laundry had made funny noises, and inquiries about our investigation. Fortunately she didn't give us enough time to answer, but just keeping track of her conversation and saying the right things at the right time was enough of a strain. 

"Would you like to scream?" Zoë asked politely, once we were in a grav-tube on our own. "I'm told it does wonders at relieving emotional stress." 

I was tempted, but decided against it. "Just imagine what Mrs Sung or someone like her would say if she heard me. She'd get the management to turn the place upside-down looking for the banshee. Anyway, aren't you just as stressed?" 

"Yes, but I'm controlling it. You know, I think for the first time since I came here I'd actually like to do something sporty. Preferably something involving hitting things with a big stick." She leafed through her souvenir brochure, which was beginning to get dogeared. "Ice hockey, perhaps." 

*

The spaceport itself was sealed off, but we found the man responsible for traffic control. Like just about everyone else in the Complex, that meant he worked out what needed to be done, and the machines did it. When we brought up the topic of Mr Warner, he remembered him at once. 

"Oh, yes," he said. "Him. Something funny about him, if you ask me. Kept asking about how cargo's brought in." 

"Could you tell us what you told him?" I asked. "It might be important." 

"Not a lot to tell. All these ships have automatic cargo holds. Everything's checked against the manifests when they load and unload. All the storage is robot-operated, too." 

"That's all?" Zoë asked. "He didn't ask about anything else?" 

"He kept asking if you could get something in that wasn't on the lists." 

"Contraband, you mean?" 

"Pretty much. I wondered if he was trying to get me mixed up with something dodgy." 

"Could someone be bringing contraband in?" I asked. 

"Not hidden in the cargo. Every gram of weight matters when you're calculating the course – someone would be sure to notice. If the ship was manned the pilot could stick a few bits and pieces in his hand luggage, but he'd run a fair risk getting them past all our scanners." 

"Suppose..." Zoë stopped briefly. "No. Never mind that. What if you wanted to smuggle something out, rather than in?" 

"What's there to smuggle?" 

"We've heard rumours that there was something valuable here. We were wondering, if it got stolen, how the thief would get it away." 

"Easiest if they were a passenger on a regular shuttle, I'd have thought. Why should there be anything funny about the freight?" 

Zoë shrugged. "That would be a question for the late Mr Warner. He was the one who was asking." 

"And that's all he asked about?" 

"Pretty much." 

"You didn't notice if he went on the scheduled ride to Goldenrock Crater?" 

"We'd finished talking by then, so he could have done." 

We left it there. 

*

"What were you going to say?" I asked. "When you said 'suppose', and then stopped." 

"I was going to say that if you're smuggling something here, the obvious thing to do is not bring it in at all. Launch it from the ship in a mini-lander, so it ends up in a crater. Then whoever has the spacesuit and the T-Mat can pick it up at their leisure." 

"Wouldn't someone notice the lander being launched?" 

"Not if they did it during landing manoeuvres. There'd be so much interference from the ion engines that radar wouldn't show anything else." 

"Why didn't you say all that then?" 

"He didn't need to know. And he could be involved in whatever's going on, of course." 

I looked around. "Now what? You wanted to find some floor plans, didn't you?" 

"Yes," Zoë said. "But while we're here, let's take a look at the Complex from the outside." 

In the normal course of events, looking at the Complex from outside would have been easy. They've got a number of short-range space pods and we could just have booked a trip on one. Thanks to the 'technical fault' that had shut down the spaceport, that wasn't an option, so Zoë had to put another call through to the head of Security. 

"I wish I hadn't had to do that," she said, while we were walking to the pod bay. "I had to tell her who I'm really working for. If she's an accomplice in the murder I've just given her an excellent reason to kill us." 

"I suppose that's a risk we'll have to take," I said. "Otherwise we'll never get anything done." 

"I know. But it makes the suspect list longer all the time." 

*

When we got to the pod bay, we picked a pod at random. They all looked pretty much the same – small, white, and rounded. Lots of portholes, so the passengers could see the view. We were strapped in, side by side, in the cockpit. There was a small passenger compartment behind us, with room for six or eight more people. The pod didn't have artificial gravity, so our hair was floating about all over the place. I wasn't sure whether the butterflies in my stomach were from the weightlessness, or nervousness. 

"Can you fly one of these?" I asked. 

"I don't know," Zoë said cheerfully. "I've never tried. It shouldn't be a problem, though." 

She pressed a few buttons on the control panel. The pod gently hummed, and began to glide forward into the hangar airlock. 

"Our course is preprogrammed," she continued. "We just sit here and keep an eye out." 

"What for?" 

"Anything that looks out of place. I can't be more specific than that." 

I didn't know what would look out of place or not, but I held my tongue. Then the airlock opened, the pod drifted out into space, and I was too busy clutching my seat and trying to avoid the feeling that I was falling forward into a star-lined, midnight-black tunnel. 

I tried to speak, but all that came out was "Erk." 

"Are you all right?" Zoë asked. 

"It's a bit... overwhelming," I managed. 

Zoë sounded puzzled. "But you must have seen space before. On the shuttle that brought you here, if nothing else." 

"That was different." 

"I suppose the shuttle would have had artificial gravity." Zoë visibly dismissed the problem of my irrational behaviour from her mind. "Starting the first pass now." 

The pod flipped over – my stomach nearly did too. Now, instead of just empty space, we could see the Complex and the asteroid it was built on. The Complex itself was set in a large, smooth, crater at one end of the asteroid. It looked rather like a gigantic grey starfish, clinging on to the rock. 

"That's the area we want to start with," Zoë said, pointing at one of the arms of the starfish. I presumed she meant that was the block containing Mr Warner's room. We went quite close in, as close as the automatic systems would allow, but there wasn't any sign of a concealed hatch or airlock or secret passage. 

Next we circled the entire Complex. If Zoë spotted anything out of the ordinary she didn't mention it. As far as I was concerned, it was all equally incomprehensible. I asked her a couple of times about bits of equipment, radio dishes and the like, but she said they looked perfectly normal to her. 

Once we'd looked all over the Complex, I thought we'd go back, but instead the pod lifted a bit further, so it was out of the crater, and began to spiral out over the surface of the asteroid. It was only then that I realised how big the asteroid was, and how little of it the Complex took up. 

"Why's the Complex where it is?" I asked, more to pass the time than because I desperately wanted to know the answer. "I mean, why in this crater and not any of the others?" 

"It makes spaceship landings simpler if it's on the spin axis," Zoë said. "That narrows it down to two possibles. I presume they chose this end because of the crater." 

"I thought they put the crater in when they built everything. It looks artificial." 

"No, that was already there. It's from the war. Some Cerean privateers had a base here. The crater's from when it was destroyed." 

"So if the pirates–" 

"Privateers," Zoë said. "There is a distinction." 

I tried to remember the bits and pieces we'd been told about the war. We'd just been children, of course, when Ceres and the other asteroid colonies had fought and lost their war of independence. 

"Are you wondering if there's something they left here?" I asked. "Buried treasure? Or did they stumble across some kind of alien gadget?" 

"Well, it would explain why the deal, whatever it was, was supposed to take place here." 

"But surely they'd have found anything worth finding when the Complex was built?" 

"I'd have thought so. There'd have had to be all kinds of surveys. And from what I've heard the people here were, well, freedom fighters. Fanatics. They wouldn't have been interested in hoarding treasure." 

"What's that?" I asked sharply. There had been a momentary gleam, as if someone on the rocky surface below us had flashed a light at us. 

"I think it's ice," Zoë said. "Catching the sunlight. This asteroid's got quite a high proportion of ice." 

I hadn't thought about it before, but it made sense. All those swimming pools and boating lakes in the Complex had to have got their water from somewhere. 

Whatever interest I'd had in the landscape out there didn't last. It was just a neverending succession of lumpy rocks and those deceptive flashes of light. The first few times we crossed a ridge or peered into a crater, I'd expected to see some kind of secret base or superweapon. I didn't, of course. 

"Do you think we'll find anything?" I asked Zoë. 

Zoë yawned. I didn't know, then, just how little sleep she'd been getting. 

"I don't know," she said. "I was more or less hoping–" 

Before she could say what she'd been hoping for, there was a colossal bang and the pod was suddenly spinning round and round out of control. The window in front of us simply disappeared, leaving nothing between us and the depths of space. 

I think I screamed, but of course it didn't make any sound. 


	12. Friday (pm)

When I remember being in that pod, strapped in and face to face with hard vacuum, it feels as if it lasted for minutes, maybe hours. But according to the flight recorder, the emergency seals closed in less than five seconds. Before I could even think of holding my breath (which Zoë told me afterwards would have been exactly the wrong thing to do) some sort of plastic or aluminium shield had clicked into place across the hole where the window had been, and the air that had been blowing past us just stopped. 

On the shuttle that brought us to the Complex, we'd all been shown what to do if something like this happened. I tried to remember the procedure – there was something about an emergency oxygen system. It ought to look like a clear plastic facemask, hanging on the wall beside a green cylinder. It didn't take me that long to find it, but Zoë was way ahead of me. She must have had training for this sort of thing. She already had her mask on and was pushing buttons and switches on the control panel. That had to be part of her conditioning, too; her hands seemed to be moving about all on their own without her mind doing anything. 

I got my mask on in the end, and started to take more of an interest in my surroundings. There were red lights all over the control board, and an oddly piercing alarm coming from somewhere. It sounded a long way off, but what air was left in the pod was pretty thin and it made it difficult to judge. The lights in the cabin behind us seemed to be going bright and dim in a regular cycle. 

"What happened?" I asked. I don't think Zoë heard me. She was still manipulating the controls, methodically working her way along a row of little levers. Once she'd reached the end, she slumped in her chair, as if she'd reached the end of her programming. 

She said something, but what with the mask she was wearing and the thin air I couldn't make it out. I tried to tell her I hadn't heard, but of course she couldn't hear that either. In the end, she seemed to realise the problem, turned back to the control panel, and opened a valve. There was another hiss of air. The sound of the alarm got louder, and then cut out. 

Zoë took off her mask. The hose it was attached to retracted automatically. 

"Can you hear me now?" she said. 

I took off my own mask. The air was thin, but breathable. 

"Yes. What happened?" 

"Something hit us." 

"And?" 

"It took out a major thruster array and most of the power system. We've got no navigation to speak of, no servos, no radio, nothing. Shall I go on?" 

"You mean we're going to crash?" 

"Probably not." Zoë slumped in her chair again. "If we were going to collide with the asteroid I think that would have happened by now. The most likely scenario is that we spin off into space. In a few hours or days we'll run out of oxygen and then we'll suffocate." 

"Can't we do anything?" 

"We?" 

"Well, you. I wouldn't know where to begin." 

"I'm not sure I would, either. The standard emergency procedure wasn't really designed for this situation." 

"You seemed to be managing all right just now. I thought you said you'd never flown one of these before." 

"I haven't. At least... No, I'm sure I haven't." She let her hands hover over the controls. "It makes some kind of sense, though. I must have been taught the basic principles in college." She put her hands in her lap, and yawned again. "Something you learn once and never quite forget. Like falling off a bicycle." She wasn't really looking at me, or anything else, and her voice was becoming dull, almost robotic. "Bicycle. Two-wheeled, human-powered vehicle. Applications include transportation, sports..." 

I tried to reach over and shake her, but we were still strapped into our seats. I fumbled with the buckles, trying to work out how they were fastened. 

"...Female emancipation in the late nineteenth century." Zoë made a strange choking noise. "Falling off a bicycle. Never forget. I won't forget–" 

I managed to get free of the straps, made a grab for the breathing mask Zoë had used earlier, and held it over her mouth. It took a few seconds, but then her eyes focused, and she stopped babbling. 

"Thank you," she said. She took the mask from me, but held it near her face rather than letting it retract. "Sorry about that. Where were we?" 

"Are you all right?" I asked. 

"Probably not, but I don't have time to worry about that. You asked what we could do." 

"Yes." I can't have sounded very confident. 

"Right. We need to find the emergency kit. That means moving around. You've probably noticed we've got a bit of gravity..." 

I hadn't, but it made sense. Otherwise I'd have been floating all over the place the moment I'd unstrapped myself. 

"... That'll get weaker. I'm using what thrusters we have to counteract the spin. As the spin gets less so will the gravity. Then you're going to have to fly the ship while I navigate." 

"But I can't–" 

"I'm pretty sure there's still a usable porthole back there," Zoë said, unbuckling her harness. "Once we've stopped the spin, I'll have to look through it to work out where we're going. But if I'm in the rear compartment navigating, I can't reach the controls. You'll have to do that bit." 

"But I don't know what controls to press." 

"Then I'll tell you." 

"And why do you think there's a porthole?" 

"Haven't you noticed the light keeps getting brighter and dimmer?" Zoë was looking completely on top of things again; talking down to me seemed to have a beneficial effect on her. "I'm pretty sure that's the sun. Every time we spin, one or more portholes must point in that direction. We'll have to watch out for that." 

"What do you mean?" 

"Try not to look directly at the sun, if you can help it. I don't know what radiation shielding we've got left." 

"Anything else?" 

"Yes. Don't touch the emergency seals." She gestured at the panel covering where the front screen had been. "The last thing we want is a leak. If I can stop us spinning, we won't have any gravity, so move slowly and carefully and try to hang onto things. And, Lily..." 

She put her hand on mine, and looked straight into my eyes. 

"Yes?" I asked. 

"Whatever you do, try not to be sick. In weightless conditions, you won't believe the mess it makes." 

*

I saw what she was driving at when we had climbed out of our seats and made our way into the rear compartment. A couple of the portholes on the starboard side were open, and all you could see was the stars flying past and the occasional flash of sunlight. I found my head was starting to spin and turned away as quickly as I could. 

Then I had to go back to the cockpit. Zoë strapped me into the pilot's seat and disappeared. As soon as she was back at the porthole, she started calling instructions. Things like "Thruster A2 to full thrust." I had to repeat each one as I did it. 

"Shut down thrusters T7 and A4." 

"Shut down T7 and A4, aye." 

A few times, before I'd learned where everything was, I ended up pressing the wrong switch. That made Zoë groan with frustration, which was somehow worse than if she'd shouted at me. I was terrified that some mistake I made would kill us both. 

"Thruster V4 to three-quarters power." 

"Thruster V4 to three-quarters power, aye." 

After a bit, it got quite hypnotic. If I concentrated on the controls as I worked them, I could forget that we were in a tiny, crippled pod kilometres away from help and no-one knew where we were. 

"Set alert for 312 seconds." 

"Alert set for 312 seconds, aye." 

In the intervals where we were waiting for the latest course correction to take effect, when there was nothing to do but stare at the timer counting down, I found myself hoping it was all some dreadful dream, and that I'd wake up back in my bed at the Complex. Or better yet, back on Earth. 

"Fire T8 at half power," Zoë said. "Then shut down on my mark." 

"T8 to half-power, aye." I counted under my breath. 

"Mark!" 

I shut the thruster down. 

"All right," Zoë continued. "We're on course. You can come out here if you want." 

I managed to climb out of my seat. My arms and legs felt terribly stiff, and though it wasn't particularly warm I'd sweated buckets. There wasn't any gravity now, but I got on all right hanging on to the back of the seat. 

Zoë was kneeling on the floor, the emergency kit spread out in front of her, looking as shattered as I felt. 

"Are we going to make it?" I asked. 

She looked up at me and let out a long sigh. 

"All I can say is 'maybe'. If we don't develop any new fuel leaks, if the emergency seals hold, if we don't hit anything else..." She tried to smile reassuringly. "Our chances are still a lot better than they were half an hour ago: you're a good pilot. Take a look." 

I fumbled my way over to one of the portholes and took a look. The stars weren't spinning any more, and the asteroid was in the centre of the view. It looked terribly small and distant. 

"Pod Five to asteroid 405762 2026-WK201," Zoë said behind me. "Come in, please." 

I tried to turn round, found I couldn't, and drifted halfway across the cabin before I could catch onto a seat. Once I was able to take an interest in things again, I realised Zoë was talking into a little hand-held radio that was part of the emergency kit. She switched it off. 

"We'll have to wait until we get closer," she said. "The signal's too weak." 

"Do you think our air will hold out that long?" I asked. It was already beginning to get stuffy. 

"I think so. If the oxygen alarm goes off again, or you feel drowsy, or I start talking nonsense, light a candle." 

"Candle?" I asked, puzzled. 

Zoë indicated a bundle of cylinders among the contents of the emergency kit. They were long, thin, and plastered with warning stickers. 

"Haven't you seen a candle before?" she asked. 

I shook my head. 

"They generate oxygen. You clip one to a stand, pull this pin out and push the cap down. These would probably last us four hours each. If you have to use one, don't touch it once it's going. The reaction is strongly exothermic." She looked at my blank face, and sighed. "I mean, they can get very hot." 

I took another look out of the porthole. The asteroid didn't seem any closer. 

"If we do get hold of the Complex, can they rescue us?" I said. 

"I hope so," Zoë said. "But I can't be certain. It'll be annoying if they can't. I haven't worked out who did the murder yet and I don't like leaving a job half-done." 


	13. Friday (pm)

In the end, we did manage to get close enough to the Complex to raise them on Zoë's radio. Zoë almost seemed disappointed when they sent a recovery ship out to pick us up. I think she was rather enjoying being the captain of a spaceship, even if it was only a smashed-up pod. Or perhaps she wanted to have a go at docking, with her at the porthole and me at the controls. If so, I'm very glad she didn't get the chance to try. 

We were met at the pod bay by Doctor Fowler and an ethereal-looking redhead who turned out to be Ms Lombardi, the head of security. From her picture, you might have thought she was an artist or a poet, but when you met her in real life, she had the same sort of plastic-coated unflappability as Zoë. Except with Zoë, you could tell there was a real person somewhere in there. With Ms Lombardi, I was never quite sure. 

"Do you have any telemetry?" Zoë asked them, without preliminary. "Can you tell what hit us?" 

"We'll go into that later," Ms Lombardi said. "For now, you two are placed in Doctor Fowler's care until he passes you as fit for duty." 

If she thought she was getting rid of us that easily, she was wrong. Doctor Fowler put us through a battery of tests, but was forced to conclude that we'd survived our experience with no permanent damage to our lungs or any other vital organs. For a moment, he'd looked as if he'd been about to send us to bed to rest, but I think he was worried that if he'd tried, Zoë would have decked him. 

As soon as we were out of Doctor Fowler's care, we headed for Ms Lombardi's office. This time she let both of us in, and we found ourselves facing her across a large and empty desk. 

"Have you found out what hit us yet?" Zoë asked. 

"Before we get into speculation, I will require you to give your full accounts of the incident," Ms Lombardi said calmly. 

"Is that really necessary?" I said. 

"The sooner, the better. I don't want your evidence tainted by any theories we may discuss later. That is the proper procedure." 

"I suppose so," Zoë said. "Where do you want us to start?" 

Between the two of us, we managed to describe what had happened on our space flight. After all the interviews we'd conducted over the past couple of days, it seemed a bit odd that we were now the ones being questioned. But I could see that it was necessary. 

"Thank you," Ms Lombardi eventually concluded. "Now, I think we should review the other evidence." 

The other evidence turned out to be a handful of video recordings, made by cameras in or on the pod. The interior camera just showed Zoë and me sitting at the controls. Even in slow motion, all we saw was a brief flash of light before the picture jumped, flickered and broke up. Most of the other cameras were even less informative; their recordings were starfields, and the only evidence of any impact was a sudden jerk sideways. And the camera that had been pointing straight down just showed a cratered landscape with the occasional twinkle of light from lumps of ice. 

We'd been out of sight of the Complex's radar at the time, so that didn't show anything. The pod's own radar recordings indicated a fast-moving incoming object, but didn't give us much of an idea where it came from or what it had been. 

"What about the pod?" I asked. "Wouldn't whatever hit it still be sticking in the side?" 

"The impactor was vapourised on impact," Ms Lombardi said. "As was most of the thruster array it hit. We may be able to get a few clues to its composition by metallurgy, but provisionally, I estimate a greater than 90% probability that you were hit by an orbiting meteor." 

"You think it was an accident," Zoë said. 

"We try to keep the pod routes we use free of debris. But we can't clear every pebble from every possible orbit." 

"I think you should have the analysis done anyway." 

"I intend to. Do you wish to make any further comment?" 

"Not about the pod," Zoë said. "But while we're here, have you got any plans of the Complex we can look at? And any imagery of Mr Warner's room?" 

The answer to both of those questions turned out to be 'yes'. Zoë quickly zeroed in on the maintenance passage where we'd seen the person in the spacesuit the previous day. 

"There it is," she said, pointing. "That's the door we couldn't open." 

On the plan, it led to an area marked as 'storage', scarcely bigger than a broom cupboard. 

"That corridor's still locked down, isn't it?" I asked. 

Ms Lombardi nodded. "No recorded attempts to breach it." 

"Can we see the accommodation block now?" 

"May I?" Zoë asked. "Computer: Centre the display on the accommodation block. Room 218." 

The screen blurred and refocused, showing the layout of Mr Warner's room. It was pretty much like the one Zoë had occupied, before she moved in with me: surrounded on four sides by other rooms, with a corridor at one end and nothing but space at the other. There was a little porthole in that wall, so you could see the stars. 

"No secret passages or service tunnels," Zoë said. She sounded almost relieved that she was actually ruling something out. 

"So no-one could get in from another room?" I asked. 

"Only by cutting a hole through the wall," said Ms Lombardi. "There were no such holes in Mr Warner's room." 

"Suppose you crept up from the outside in a spacesuit?" 

"Then you would have to cut through three separate walls, any breach of which would set off an evacuation alarm." 

"Besides, there wasn't a hole," Zoë said. "We flew over that bit this afternoon, remember?" 

"So no-one visited Mr Warner that evening." 

Zoë nodded. "That's about the most certain thing we do know." 

"Then if he was killed, he was either given poison earlier on or there was some booby trap in his room. Can we check the crime scene imagery again?" 

We looked the holographs over from all sorts of angles, but didn't get anywhere. The room looked exactly as it should have done, lived-in without being chaotic. Apart from Mr Warner's body lying in the middle of the floor, of course. 

I could see that Ms Lombardi's patience with us was beginning to run short, so I suggested that it was getting on for evening and we should go and get something to eat. 

"That's all very well," Zoë said. "But before we go, can I have another look at the security logs? I need a list of everyone who's visited the spacesuit store since the complex opened." 

For a moment I thought Ms Lombardi was actually going to lose her temper. But whatever training she'd had held good; she just twitched slightly. 

"Bearing in mind who you're working for, I'll give you full remote access to the security system," she said. "Please don't abuse it, or I shall be obliged to arrest you. You can perform your researches in your own time, not mine. Good afternoon." 

*

"I can't believe she thought it was an accident," I said, as we made our way to the restaurant. 

"Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence," Zoë said. "Look at it from her point of view. What's more likely, that it was an accident or that there's a weapons system somewhere on the surface of the asteroid that no-one's noticed for the last five or ten years?" 

"So how can we convince her that it wasn't an accident?" 

"You know the old joke about the manager, the engineer and the programmer? They're in a helijet when the main engine fails. The helijet starts falling, faster and faster, until at the last minute the pilot regains control and makes a soft landing. They all get out and the manager says 'We need to call out a repair crew.' Then the engineer says 'No, I'm sure I can fix whatever's broken.' And the programmer says 'First, we need to get back in, take off, and see if it happens again.'" 

She needed to work on her delivery, but I laughed anyway. 

"You mean you want to fly back there in another pod and see if you get shot down again?" 

"I'm a scientist," Zoë said. "We take repeatable results very seriously. But in the interests of safety, I'd be willing to compromise on sending an unmanned pod under remote control." 

"I don't think anyone would let us take another pod out after what happened to the last one." 

"I know. It's most annoying. And we're running out of time. Tomorrow the professionals show up." 

"Still want to solve the case on your own?" 

"Yes, of course, but there's also that hypothesis about the murderer having a plan, and we're the only ones who can stop it. So far we've achieved nothing in that respect." 

She stopped, and looked up at me, her expression serious. 

"I'm usually able to complete the tasks assigned to me," she said. "That just makes it all the worse when I can't." 

"We've all got to cope with failure from time to time," I reassured her, and thought for the first time that day of the shattered remains of my love life. 

Zoë squared her shoulders. "Well, we haven't got to that point yet. Let's try and make sure we don't." 


	14. Friday (pm)

After the day we'd had, I was looking forward to an early night. Zoë, on the other hand, was positively bouncing off the walls, watching the last few minutes of footage from our pod ride again and again, taking freeze-frames, and drawing all over them with a light pen. I went into the bedroom to give her some privacy while she made her latest progress report. After what felt like ages, I was yawning my head off and she hadn't shown up, so I went out to see what she was doing. She was sitting at the comms panel, still working away at a complicated diagram. 

"I'm about to turn in," I said. 

She didn't look round. "OK." 

"Do you want anything? Coffee?" 

"No coffee, thanks, but are there any biscuits?" 

I crossed to the shelf where the kettle was, and took a look at what was on offer. 

"Yes, plain and chocolate... Zoë!" 

"What is it?" 

"You know you wanted to stay sober last night?" 

"That's right." 

"And for the same reason, you wouldn't drink alcohol now?" 

"Correct." 

I felt as if icy hands were gripping my heart. "Then who poured out this glass of brandy?" 

Zoë jumped up, her eyes wide. "What glass of brandy?" 

"Here." I pointed. It was in among the coffee things, where I wouldn't have noticed it in passing. 

"Don't touch it." 

"I wasn't going to." I glanced around wildly. "Someone's been in here." 

"I'll check the logs," Zoë said. "Never mind that for now. We need to find somewhere safe to put this." 

She paced briefly, then darted into the bedroom, coming back with one of my clean T-shirts wrapped round her hand. 

"Keep back," she said. I lost no time in retreating to the bathroom doorway. 

Taking a deep breath, Zoë gripped the glass by its base, and slid it off the table as though she expected it to explode at any minute. In the same exaggeratedly careful manner, she crossed to the minibar in the corner of the room, knelt down before it, opened it, and slid the glass in. She remained kneeling for a while longer, then gently closed the minibar. 

"Is it safe?" I asked. 

"I think so. But really, I'd prefer an airtight seal." 

"Can that wait?" 

"Perhaps. Why?" 

"I said someone's been in here. Who knows what else they've done?" 

Zoë rose to her feet, with the T-shirt still dangling from her hand. "That's a good point. Let's do a full audit." 

We went over my entire suite as thoroughly as we could, but we didn't spot any other signs of interference. We also didn't manage to find anything that could make the minibar airtight. 

"We could try and find some sealant elsewhere in the Complex," Zoë said. 

"I don't think I could face going outside just now." 

"So you'd rather be in a room, the security of which has already been breached, with a glass of mysterious liquid that might go off at any moment?" 

My face must have been a picture, because despite the stress of the situation, Zoë burst out laughing. 

"Don't worry," she said, when she eventually regained her speech. "Call room service and get them to bring us some quick-set plastic." 

"I dread to imagine what they'll think we want it for," I said, which set her off again. 

*

Once we'd got the plastic and sealed the minibar as best we could (and made rather a mess of the carpet in the process), Zoë went straight back to what she'd been doing before. 

"That helped quite a bit," she said. "I'm sure that was an attempt to kill us. It gives an insight into the method used. Remember on the crime scene imagery, there was a tumbler of liquid on the shelf near the minibar?" 

"No." 

"Well, there was. We thought Mr Warner had poured himself a drink. Maybe he didn't." 

"He wouldn't drink something that was left for him," I said slowly. "We didn't. But..." I looked again at the plastic we'd sprayed over the minibar. "You wanted an airtight seal. Some sort of gas bomb?" 

"That was what I thought," Zoë said. "You could put a capsule in the drink with a slowly-dissolving coating. And when the coating had dissolved... well!" 

I shuddered at the thought. 

"The problem is it wouldn't work," she added, matter-of-factly. "Or maybe it would work too well. The air recyclers would spread the gas everywhere. You might kill several people, or the intended victim might survive." 

"Are you sure?" 

She sat back in her chair, looking like an artist who's put the finishing touches to a canvas and realises no-one in their right mind would buy it. 

"I'm not sure of anything," she said. "Look at this Pearson diagram." 

"What?" I asked. The image on the screen looked something like a transit map and something like an explosion in a coathanger factory. Here and there was a name or someone's initials or just a phrase like 'critical time period'. 

"You remember those logic puzzles we used to do at school?" 

"Yes." Horribly artificial things, where you had to work out who was married to who and had ordered which drinks. "The husband of the lady in the sack dress wants a rum and Coke." That sort of thing. 

"Well, the Pearson diagram is a way of mapping them out, seeing possible solutions. So I thought I'd do the same here." 

"Did it work?" 

"Not really." Zoë tapped a cluster of lines with her pen. "There are so many possibilities. I need forensic evidence to narrow them down, and I can't get it. I won't have a solution for the investigator when he arrives." 

She turned the screen off, stood up, and stretched her arms. 

"It seems like it's all been for nothing," she said. "I've wasted your time and put your life in danger. Sorry." 

I put my hand on her arm. She flinched slightly, then relaxed. 

"Is it really that important for you to find a solution?" I asked. 

"It's more important than anything else I should be doing right now." She paused for a moment. "Or is it? I wonder... I think you're right, Lily." 

"About what?" 

"About getting my priorities in the correct order. Come on, let's get some sleep." 

After that, she turned suspiciously meek and obedient, and consented to be put to bed, just like a little girl who'd stayed up too late. Though she did insist that I hid both of our bracelets in the dressing table, rather than leaving them out where we could get at them. It made me wonder if she'd been overdoing things. 

I didn't sleep very well. Every time I closed my eyes, I was either choking on poisoned brandy or else back in that ship, staring into star-speckled infinity. At least one time, I'd nearly fallen asleep and then found myself wide awake again, gasping for breath. 

Zoë had been right, too, about talking in her sleep. While I was lying there, trying to get back to sleep, she started asking for more oxygen and saying how difficult it was to breathe. I thought at first she was reliving the day's events, like I had, but then she drifted onto the atomic properties of tellurium, and then something I couldn't make out about targeting missiles. 

The next thing I knew, it was what passed for morning, and Zoë was nowhere to be seen. 


	15. Saturday (am)

I woke up pretty early, or so I thought, but once again Zoë's bed was empty and her pyjamas were neatly folded beside it. I thought at first she must be in the bathroom or at the comms terminal, but there wasn't any sign of her. Her bracelet and some of her clothes had gone, too, and my shoe had been taken out of the door mechanism, so presumably she'd dressed and gone out somewhere. 

I washed and dressed, getting more and more uneasy as I did so. For the last two days Zoë had involved me in everything she did, however dangerous. Now she'd vanished without leaving so much as a note. 

She wasn't around at breakfast, either. I could hardly eat a thing, and every time someone came in I looked round, hoping it would be Zoë. It never was. After that, when there was still no sign of her, I went to a comms booth and tried to put a call through to her. The system just gave an 'unavailable' reply: either it couldn't find her, or she wasn't answering. 

I'd been putting it off, but by now I decided I had to assume the worst. I'd kept Zoë's piece of paper with me – the one that said what to do in the event of her death – and with my heart sinking I pulled it out and read it. The first thing on it was a contact number. Since I was already in a booth, I called the number before I had any chance to have second thoughts. The call went through and the screen blanked out: whoever was at the other end could see me, but I couldn't see them. 

On the paper, after the number, was a sequence of words and digits, with a note from Zoë saying to read them aloud. I did. Once I'd recited the last one, there was a short pause, and then a computer-generated voice spoke. 

"State your name," it said. 

I tried to speak clearly and calmly; it wasn't easy. "Lily Jessica Carson." 

"Your location?" 

"The Deep Space Relaxation and Recreation Complex. Near Ceres. I can't remember the asteroid number. Four-Zero-something." 

"Give your message." 

I took a deep breath. "Zoë Heriot told me to call this number if anything happened to her. Something has. She's disappeared and I can't find her. She isn't answering her calls." 

"Have you informed any other party of her disappearance?" 

This wasn't just a mindless recording system. I wasn't sure whether I was speaking to an artificial intelligence or a human disguising their voice, but I had their full attention. 

"No, I thought I should call you first." 

"Correct. Inform nobody else. In Doctor Heriot's absence, you will be our primary contact. Our agent, Mr Schmidt, is in transit and will reach your location in forty-eight minutes. When did you last see Doctor Heriot?" 

"Last night." I tried to remember a time. "Around midnight?" 

"Thank you. We will be in touch." 

The screen, which had stayed blank all the way through, displayed a CALL TERMINATED message. I leaned against the wall and breathed out. At the start of Zoë's investigation, the idea of getting involved with powerful security agencies had seemed like a fantasy or an idle joke, nothing more. Now I knew it wasn't. Some organisation, the sort you really didn't want to get involved with, had become aware of me. 

*

Less than an hour later, my bracelet chirped. It turned out to be a message from Ms Lombardi, summoning me to her office. When I got there, there was a man sitting there, beside her. Mostly, he looked unremarkable, with the sort of face that would blend in anywhere and go unnoticed. If I'd seen him in any other circumstances, I wouldn't have thought twice. The only odd thing about him was his choice of clothes: an old-fashioned black suit complete with a waistcoat and a cravat. He looked almost as if he was playing up to the stereotype of the Man in Black, the Inquisitor. 

"Ms Carson," he said, rising to his feet. "Horst Schmidt. I work for UNISYC, as I am informed you have been for the past two days." 

I must have looked rather gobsmacked. When Zoë had first mentioned working for a security organisation, I'd imagined some private agency. The experience I'd had reporting her disappearance had made me wonder just who was behind this, but it was still a shock to hear the truth. 

Mr Schmidt obviously guessed what I was thinking. "Knowingly or unknowingly," he added drily. 

I recovered myself enough to shake hands. 

"She didn't say who she was working for," I tried to explain. 

"Admirably discreet. I have reviewed her reports of your activity over the past two days." 

I felt as if I was in the Headmaster's office, about to hear my exam results. "How did we do?" 

"That remains to be seen. But the fact that you survived one or more murder attempts suggests that you did some things right." He smiled thinly. "Now, may I have your account of events since 21:17 local time last night?" 

"We went to bed," I said. "I woke a couple of times in the night. Zoë was definitely there then, because I heard her talking in her sleep." 

"What did she say?" 

As best as I could, I repeated what I'd heard her say. "I don't think it's much help," I concluded. 

"All information is valuable, if only to a degree. Then?" 

"Then I woke up, and she wasn't there. She'd taken her clothes and her bracelet." 

"Can the bracelet be tracked?" 

Ms Lombardi tapped at a computer terminal. 

"She left Ms Carson's room and visited the spacesuit store," she said. "That was at 06:53. No trace of her since." 

"Did she take anything else?" This was addressed to me. 

"I'm not sure." 

"Then take me to the room you've been using, and check." He turned back to Ms Lombardi. "I suggest an audit of the spacesuits, to see if any of them are unaccounted for. And follow your usual missing-person procedure." 

Ms Lombardi nodded. "Onto it." 

*

I opened the dressing table, and saw it at once. "She's taken the other bracelet. The bronze one. She must have used it to get around without being tracked." 

"Continue looking," Mr Schmidt said. He was making his own tour of the room; it made me wish I'd kept it tidier. "Where might she have left a message for you?" 

"I don't know." I was distractedly rummaging through my clothes. "I can't think." 

"Try." 

I tried. But before I could get anywhere, I heard the familiar beep of a bracelet. Mr Schmidt hurried across to the comms panel. 

"Schmidt," he said. 

"We have a security alert," Ms Lombardi's voice said. "The lockdown requested by Doctor Heriot has been breached. Exhibition Centre, gallery entrance. I'm heading there now." 

"I'll come at once." 

"There's more. I checked the security logs. The lockdown was suspended for five minutes, early this morning. The commands were sent from your current location, by Doctor Heriot." 

"Then she deliberately let someone in. Quite possibly herself. Is that all?" 

"The audit turned up two missing spacesuits. Green circle and purple cross." 

"They'll have to wait." He gestured at me. "Come with me. And hurry." 

*

As soon as we were in the grav-tube and on our way to the Centre, Mr Schmidt turned to me. 

"Has your mind been hardened against intrusion?" he asked. 

I shook my head. "I don't think so. How do you mean, hardened?" 

"By means of brain implants or antihypnotic drugs." 

"No!" 

"Then take this pill. If I tell you to, put it under your tongue. Its effects are only temporary. If I or Ms Lombardi haven't told you it is safe by the time the pill has completely dissolved – get out, as fast as you can." 

He handed me a single pill, blister-wrapped. I nodded. My throat felt too dry for me to speak. 

*

When we reached the gallery, we found Ms Lombardi waiting for us, a blaster in her hand. A little further away was Doctor Fowler, accompanied by a med-robot. It was the same sort of powered trolley that I was familiar with from our earlier investigations, but the top was cushioned so someone could lie on it, and it was painted white with Red Crystal badges. 

"What's the situation?" Mr Schmidt asked. 

Ms Lombardi indicated the panel that led to the maintenance corridor. It was standing open. Beside it, the small hatch that gave access to the door mechanism was also open. A crank handle lay on the ground below it. 

"Armed hostile in the corridor," she said, keeping her voice low. "I sent a reconnaissance drone. It was fired on." 

"Have the other exits been secured?" 

"Negative. I don't have the staff, particularly with a manhunt in progress. But the hostile has made no attempt to open any other exit." 

"Then what is he doing?" 

"Unknown." 

"Have you attempted to communicate with him?" 

"Several attempts, including a formal warning that we are armed. No response." 

"Then I suggest we proceed to the use of force. Gas?" 

"He's wearing a space suit." 

"I see. P-bomb, then." Mr Schmidt turned to me. "Take your pill now." 

I nearly dropped the pill, but I managed to fumble it out of its wrapping and put it in my mouth. For a moment, it tasted horrible; then I couldn't taste it at all. All my senses felt numb. The colour seemed to drain out of everything, leaving it in shades of grey and brown. 

At the same moment, Mr Schmidt pulled out what looked very much like a grenade and threw it into the corridor. I waited for the explosion, but there wasn't one. Instead, there was a tornado of colour and sound. It was painful even to my dulled senses: otherwise, it would have been intolerable. It felt as if tiny clawed creatures were crawling all over me. I looked at my hands, and somehow felt no surprise at the eyes and mouths that had appeared in my flesh. The air all around me was filled with the beat of wings and a hellish shrieking. The walls of the gallery were already dim and indistinct, but now they were almost blocked from view by clouds of coloured smoke, in which I kept thinking I could see leering inhuman faces. 

The next thing I knew, I was back in the Exhibition Centre, and all the nightmares had vanished as suddenly as they'd come. The pill under my tongue was still there, but it felt much smaller. 

Cautiously, Mr Schmidt advanced into the corridor, blaster in hand. After a moment, he reappeared. 

"Stand down," he said. "Doctor Fowler, we have one casualty." 

"That means you can spit your pill out, if there's any left," Ms Lombardi told me. 

I did so. The veil that had hung over my senses began to disperse. 

"What was that thing?" I asked. 

"Standard equipment. A psi bomb." 

"It was horrible." I rubbed my hands; they felt clammy. My clothes were sticking to me, and I was starting to shiver. 

She shrugged. "They're preferred for applications like crowd control. Non-lethal, you see." 

"No, I just wanted to claw my own eyes out." I realised something. "One casualty. Didn't he say one casualty?" 

"He did." 

"Zoë!" I tried to run into the corridor, but found my wrist held in a grip I couldn't break. 

"Whoever it is, the doctor is attending them," Ms Lombardi said. "You can't do anything, except get in the way. Don't move, or I shall have to restrain you." 

I stayed there, alternately shivering and fidgeting, until Doctor Fowler emerged from the doorway. Behind him was the medical robot, now with someone on top. They were still wearing the spacesuit, the one with the green circle. Their arms and legs were struggling against padded restraints. I wasn't sure whether they'd been tied down because they were under arrest, or because of what the psi bomb had done to their mind. _If I hadn't taken that pill_ , I thought, _I might have ended up like that_. 

The helmet of the suit had been removed, and by craning I could see who our mysterious wanderer was. Red-faced, thrashing from side to side, wild-eyed, he was almost unrecognisable as Arthur Pembroke. 


	16. Saturday (am)

"He was trying to open this door," Mr Schmidt said. 

We were standing outside the mysterious door that we'd seen the man in the suit – presumably Pembroke – come out of on our previous visit. The access panel beside it was open, and a crank handle was sticking out. 

Mr Schmidt turned to me. "This is the same door?" He was treating me as the expert, I noticed, not Ms Lombardi. 

"Yes," I said. "I'm positive." 

"And you say it did not respond to the Complex master key?" 

"That's right." 

"Ms Lombardi, can you confirm that, please?" 

Ms Lombardi held her own bracelet in front of the door. Nothing happened. 

"Pembroke was attempting to use the manual override. Let us do likewise," he continued. He grasped the handle and tried to turn it anticlockwise, then clockwise. It didn't budge. Apparently not dismayed by this, he took a device from his pocket, about the size of a matchbox, and placed it on the door. It stuck to the surface, like a magnet. A blinking amber light appeared on one end, and was joined a few seconds later by another. 

"Is that a picklock?" I asked. 

"That depends on who's using it," Mr Schmidt replied curtly. 

We waited for a few minutes, while various other lights on the device blinked on and off. There were several clicks from the door, but it didn't open. Then the lights settled into a steady pattern. 

"Interesting." Mr Schmidt retrieved his device. "It would seem that the mechanism has been completely jammed. We shall need cutting equipment." 

There was another delay, while I tried not to bite my fingernails. By now the Complex must had been turned upside-down, but no-one had called to say that they'd found Zoë. She had to be behind that door, somehow, but would she be alive when we got to her? 

It seemed to take years for two men to turn up with a heavy-duty laser, and then to set it up and melt through the door. I'd been expecting them to cut round the edge of the door, but Mr Schmidt just had them burn a few holes, enough to disconnect the locking mechanism. Then one of the men tried to open the door with the manual crank. This time, it worked. 

The moment that the door was opened, thick smoke billowed out, smelling strongly of chemicals. The oxygen alarms went off all down the corridor, and we had to retreat and wait until the air recyclers had restored something approaching normality. Then Mr Schmidt advanced through the door, and beckoned me to follow. 

The room beyond was tiny, just as the plans had said. On the right as we looked in was an equipment cabinet, with its doors open and circuit boards scattered about on the floor. In the middle was a raised platform, a few centimetres high, with wires running to the cabinet. And on the left-hand side was lying a motionless spacesuited figure, a purple X prominent on its chest, with a few unused oxygen candles lying on the floor around it. 

I moved cautiously forward, trying to see who was in the suit. Even with the ventilation from the corridor outside, the smoke in the air was making it difficult to see, and I kept coughing. 

The suited figure seemed to notice me. It moved its hand feebly, as though trying to reach for its helmet, and then let it fall. 

"Oxygen exhausted," Mr Schmidt said, leaning over the suit. "We'd better open this one up now." 

He put his hands on either side of the suit's faceplate, pressed something I couldn't quite see, and twisted. The helmet came away with a hiss of air, revealing Zoë, gasping for breath, with a nasty bluish tinge to her lips. 

"Hello..." she whispered. She tried to get up, but between her weakened state and the weight of the suit, she could hardly move, let alone stand. 

"Doctor Zoë Heriot, I presume?" Mr Schmidt asked. 

Zoë nodded, but didn't seem up to speaking. 

"Yes, that's her," I added. 

Mr Schmidt bent over her. 

"Is there anything important you wish to say now?" he asked. "Anything that we need to do as a matter of urgency?" 

"Did you get... him?" Zoë asked faintly. 

"We have one person in custody. Pembroke." 

"Pembroke, Arthur. Deputy sub-secretary in something or other. Head spinning..." Her brow furrowed. "Guard this place. Don't let anyone in." 

"We won't." Mr Schmidt looked up at me. "Tell Doctor Fowler to get down here again. We're bringing her out." 

*

As far as I was concerned, Zoë would have been quite within her rights to pass out and be carried back to the sickbay on the med-robot. But her stubborn streak wouldn't put up with that. Once we'd got her into the corridor and out of her spacesuit, she insisted on walking, though to start with she had to lean on me. By the time we got to the sickbay, the colour was back in her cheeks and she was her usual confident self. She was even solving cubic equations in her head, just to prove it. 

After Doctor Fowler had once again given her a clean bill of health, Mr Schmidt suggested a meeting to review the case. 

"Can we do that after lunch?" Zoë asked. "I need to do some fact checking." 

"Provided I can accompany you. After all the trouble I've been to to find you, I don't want you to go missing again." 

"That makes sense. Oh, are you going to invite Mr Maranga to this meeting as well?" 

"It would seem to be the obvious thing to do, wouldn't it?" 

"What about Ms Evans?" I asked. 

Mr Schmidt turned to me. "What about her?" 

"Well, doesn't the detective get hold of all the suspects to explain how he solved the case? I mean, Charlie Forbes does that in every episode." I felt myself blushing. 

"I hope you have not been emulating Inspector Forbes in other respects. The methods he uses would, in real life, result in most of his cases being thrown out of court." 

"Don't worry," Zoë said. "We haven't." She turned to Mr Schmidt. "Are you ready?" 

He nodded. 

"Can't I come with you?" I asked. 

"You'd only get bored," she said. "Oh, by the way, I think the room we've been sharing needs to be sealed and searched for evidence. And the one I was in before that." 

She didn't reappear until just before lunchtime, when she suddenly turned up, carrying a holdall and wearing what looked like a brand-new trouser suit. When I asked her where she'd been, all she said was that the clothes had been paid for by UNISYC, to replace the ones she'd damaged climbing down the rocks. She wouldn't show me what was in the bag, either. Apparently she wanted it to be a surprise. 


	17. Saturday (pm)

We all took our seats around the table in the conference room: Mr Schmidt, Zoë, me, Doctor Fowler, Ms Lombardi, Mr Maranga, and a fat moustached man called Mr Franks who, it turned out, was the manager of the Complex. To the best of my knowledge, he hadn't taken the slightest interest in anything we'd been doing up to now, even when we'd nearly been killed in the pod, and I had no idea why he'd suddenly changed his mind. 

Mr Schmidt opened the meeting. 

"Thank you all for attending," he said. "As you know, two and a half days ago a man going by the name of Eric Warner died here. Since then, Doctor Heriot and Ms Carson have been investigating the matter." 

There were general nods. 

"Now, Doctor Heriot, perhaps you can tell us the results of your investigation?" 

"Of course," Zoë said, straight away. "To summarize, briefly, I was contacted on Wednesday by UNISYC and told that Mr Warner had died, possibly murdered. I was also told that this might have been connected to a conspiracy, the aim of which was unknown but, it was presumed, would be accomplished by the time the formal investigation into Mr Warner's murder began. 

"Yesterday, and the day before, my colleague Ms Carson and myself tried, as far as we could, to find the truth of these questions. By yesterday evening, we had considerable evidence of some kind of covert activity, but no definite proof. For those of you who don't know, our major discovery was of a locked room in an unused part of this Complex, containing one end of a T-Mat link. The T-Mat in question is currently being studied, I believe, to work out where the other end is." 

"Correct," Mr Schmidt said. 

"Now, on the assumption that whoever was operating this link was part of the conspiracy, I decided to shut down the link and trap the operator at the same time. I didn't know who it was, you see. On the balance of probabilities it was Mr Maranga rather than Ms Evans, but I didn't really have a case against either of them. As we now know, it turned out to be someone else entirely. 

"I'd asked Ms Lombardi to put a security lockdown on the corridor containing the locked room. This was done for a number of reasons, but one of them was that if someone tried to open any of the doors, they'd set an alarm off and we'd be able to catch them red-handed." 

"Except that they might have escaped using the T-Mat before anyone got there," Mr Maranga pointed out. 

"Well, possibly. It was a matter of timing. Anyway, nothing had happened by this morning. Perhaps the murderer had decided to lie low instead of using the T-Mat to escape. So I decided to see if I could get to the T-Mat first. Hopefully that would provoke the murderer to come down and find out what was happening. The door to the T-Mat had been disconnected from the normal security system, or perhaps never connected in the first place, so I used the manual mechanism to open it." 

"Couldn't you have used the manual override earlier?" Ms Lombardi asked. "And why didn't you tell me all this?" 

"I didn't think of it earlier. And I didn't tell you because you might have been part of the conspiracy. Sorry." 

"How do you know now that I'm not?" 

"Well, I don't. But if you are and you try anything, you've got Mr Schmidt to deal with now, and the rest of UNISYC if you manage to kill him and me. So if you are involved, the logical course of action would be to give yourself up." 

Mr Franks scowled. "You have no right to accuse my security chief of such things," he said. 

"She wasn't accusing me," Ms Lombardi said calmly. "Please continue. You broke into the room." 

"That's right," Zoë said. "I hoped it would alert whoever it was, and they'd come to see what I was doing. Well, he did, but I think he must have been waiting until Lily was out of the way." 

"You mean he was watching me?" I asked. 

"Perhaps he just asked one of the staff to let him know what you were doing. Maybe for money. I don't know." 

"The creepy old..." I caught myself. 

"Be that as it may," Zoë continued calmly, "I wanted to catch whoever it was without actually getting shot. So I decided the best thing to do was to lock myself in the room. He probably wouldn't be able to get in, and if he did I'd at least know who it was before I died." 

"But what good would that have done? You'd have been dead and he'd have got away." 

"Well, maybe I could have disarmed him. But obviously the best case was to make sure he didn't get in in the first place, so I jammed the door. Did you notice how I did that?" 

"We were more concerned about what had happened to you," I said, shuddering to think of that motionless, spacesuited figure. 

"You forced an oxygen generator into the mechanism," Mr Schmidt said. "When you activated it, the heat was sufficient to distort the moving parts beyond use, possibly even to weld them together." 

"So you did notice." Zoë deflated a little. "I didn't want to smash up the T-Mat too badly, because it's evidence, so I just pulled out all the circuits and put another candle through its main power bus. It should still be possible to work out where the other end of it is – I mean the other end of the T-Mat, not the candle, of course." 

"Of course," Mr Schmidt said drily. 

"Why were you wearing a spacesuit?" I asked. "And how did you get it there?" 

"I put it on in the spacesuit store, and walked to the Exhibition Hall. No-one was about. As for why I was wearing it: One, I didn't know if there was breathable air on the other side of the door. I'd only seen someone come out of it wearing a spacesuit. Two, spacesuits have built-in waste disposal units. I didn't know how long I was going to have to wait, after all, and I could hardly pop out to visit the Ladies." 

"In the event, you couldn't have waited much longer," Mr Schmidt said. 

"No. That was a slip-up. I'd hoped that I could use candles and only seal the suit and use its supply if I ran out of them. I took enough candles for a day. But when I destroyed the power supply there was so much smoke that I had to close the suit and rely on its air straight away." 

"Why did you take all those risks?" I asked. 

"Oh, that was your idea," Zoë said casually. "You asked me whether solving the case was the most important thing I had to do. I realised it wasn't. What was important was stopping the conspiracy, if there was one. And putting a candle through their T-Mat was the best way I could think of. I should have done it sooner." 

She paused, briefly. 

"Anyway," she continued, "The trap worked, and a man in a spacesuit was arrested. It turned out to be Mr Pembroke. Now, if Mr Pembroke was also the man we saw on Thursday afternoon, then at the time he was down the tunnel he was supposed to be playing squash with Mr Maranga here. We thought Mr Pembroke might be lying to protect Mr Maranga, but it looks as if it was the other way round." 

She stopped again, and looked at Mr Maranga, who folded his arms and said nothing. 

"Do you have any comment to make?" Mr Schmidt asked him. 

"None." came the calm reply. 

"Go on, Doctor Heriot." 

"This is only a guess, I'm afraid. Mr Maranga is a wealthy businessman. Mr Pembroke is a civil servant. I don't think he could bribe Mr Maranga with money. But I wondered if he had some kind of a hold over him. In my two interviews with Ms Evans, she hinted very strongly that Mr Maranga had some kind of dark secret in his past. And she repeatedly mentioned the war. It is, of course, possible that she is unbalanced. But my research indicates that her younger brother, Percival Evans, was killed on the _Morning Star_ , along with twenty-three other unarmed non-combatants. The identity of the ship that destroyed _Morning Star_ was never published, but among the vessels assigned to that sector was the _Congreve_ , on which Mr Maranga was serving as a lieutenant. 

"My guess is that Mr Pembroke discovered something along these lines, and threatened to publish unless Mr Maranga gave him what he asked for. Alibis, certainly, but possibly money as well. I stress that I don't know what, if any, connection Mr Maranga has with the loss of _Morning Star_." 

"But even an innocent man would have cause to fear such a damaging allegation," Mr Schmidt said. "Have you anything to say now?" 

"As the young lady says, I was a lieutenant at the time," Mr Maranga said, slowly. "There were reports of a hostile vessel in the sector. When the _Morning Star_ appeared on our screens, our squadron set an intercept course. We received a garbled message claiming that they were unarmed and they were unable to heave to; their rockets were damaged. My commanding officer gave the order to fire. Some missiles missed, some hit. Exactly whose, I don't think anybody knows." 

He paused briefly, as if looking back through time to the Asteroid War. 

"It was hushed up," he said. "The political mood after the war was to sweep all such incidents under the carpet. But the knowledge was still there, for the right people to find. Or, in this case, the wrong people." 

"Thank you," Zoë said. "I think what happened was this: When Mr Warner asked for an appointment with Mr Maranga, Mr Pembroke got to hear of it. I'm not sure how much he found out, but he may have got the idea that Mr Warner was looking into the smuggling of items in and out of the Complex. And Mr Pembroke was smuggling items in." 

"Impossible," Mr Franks said. 

"How?" Ms Lombardi asked. 

"I don't know how the T-Mat got there, but it must have come from somewhere. And there are other things, which I'll come to later. Once the T-Mat was installed, the rest of the equipment could have been left at a drop-off point on the surface and brought in by T-Mat. For now, the point is that Mr Pembroke thought that Mr Warner was poking his nose in, and decided he had to die. 

"Lily and I hadn't really considered Mr Pembroke during our investigations, but now he's been caught Mr Schmidt has been making some inquiries." 

Mr Schmidt took up the tale. 

"One way and another, he has lived beyond his means for most of his life," he said. "He has attempted to supplement his official income in various ways. The best-documented of these is gambling, and it would seem that he is in debt to various individuals and organisations. In particular, he has been connected with certain Independent Ceres fringe groups." 

"Yesterday afternoon, Lily and I were in a pod, examining the surface of the asteroid," Zoë said. "We were hit by something and the pod was badly damaged. In the absence of any other evidence, Ms Lombardi decided that the most likely cause was an accident. But take a look at this footage." 

The room darkened, and a screen lit up, showing the view of the asteroid from the pod. After a few seconds, the screen jolted and went blank. 

"I analysed the number of ice flashes in that area, and compared it to the number we saw in other parts of the asteroid," Zoë continued. "It was two standard deviations higher. Then I saw this." 

The screen showed a single frame, at maximum zoom. In a crack between two rocks was something shiny and semicircular. 

"To me, that looks less like ice and more like a solar collector, and I think that's what the extra flashes are. I suggest that there is something in that area of the asteroid that shouldn't be there. Almost certainly, it includes a weapon system, probably dating from when this asteroid was a base for Cerean privateers. We thought that anything of that kind would have been discovered in surveys, and perhaps it was. But as it turns out, that's rather beside the point. 

"The official to whom those surveys were sent was the same man who granted permission for the Complex to be built here. His title at the time was the Chief Planning Inspector for the Ceres quadrant. His name is Arthur Pembroke." 


	18. Saturday (pm)

Ms Lombardi leaned across the table. 

"Let me get this straight," she said. "You claim that Pembroke and his Independent Ceres friends knew there was something on this asteroid." 

"I suspect it," Zoë said. "Most of this is theory, extrapolated from the occasional data point." 

"Then, in your theory, what happened?" 

"I think it went something like this. Some time before the Complex was built, Mr Pembroke became connected with the Independent Cereans. I expect he borrowed money from them, and got involved in their shadier operations to repay the debt. 

"At some point, plans were made to build this Complex. Someone in the Independents knew that despite the destruction of the privateer base, there was something valuable hidden here, and agreed a plan with Mr Pembroke. The Complex would be built on this asteroid, and then it could be used as a staging post to recover the item." 

"That would be years ago," Doctor Fowler said. "Whatever would be worth all that effort?" 

"Something big," Zoë said. "Lily and I discussed the possibility of pirate treasure, but it didn't seem to match what we'd read about the war. A weapon seems more likely. And if it takes this long to recover it, that suggests it's a big weapon. 

"Anyway, over the years people have been coming here and gradually making preparations to recover the weapon, or treasure, or whatever it is. And this week, Mr Pembroke arrived. Possibly it was his turn. Possibly the plan had reached completion and he was tasked with recovering the loot. Possibly he was trying to double-cross his accomplices and get away with the goods before they found out. He persuaded Mr Maranga to accompany him: an unimpeachable witness for any alibis he might need. 

"All seemed to be going well, until Mr Warner started asking questions. I don't know what he'd heard, and whether the rumours of alien artefacts were connected to what was really going on here. But he made an appointment with Mr Maranga. Mr Pembroke got to hear of it, and took fright. He decided to kill Mr Warner." 

"A hasty decision," Mr Schmidt said. 

"Yes. I thought that there was a lot of careful planning involved in all this, and there was, but we don't think Mr Pembroke was the one doing it. Someone in the Independents came up with the plans, and the technical details. The actual execution of the plans was by Mr Pembroke, and he was... clumsy." 

"Now we come to it," Ms Lombardi said. "Your theory is coherent as far as it goes, and explains the observed facts. But can you prove Mr Warner was killed?" 

Zoë shook her head. "I've worked it all out, and I have a certain amount of evidence. But if the autopsy doesn't back me up, we'll have to start all over again. 

"I suspect it was done like this. A robot was reprogrammed to deliver a glass of drink to Mr Warner's room. You can see it on the crime scene imagery." She brought up the appropriate image, with the drink circled in red. "In the glass was a capsule with a slowly-dissolving coating. At roughly 20:00, the coating was all gone and the capsule itself dissolved, releasing a gas." 

"But you said that wouldn't work," I protested. "You said it would get into the air recyclers and poison everyone." 

"I don't think the gas released was lethal," Zoë said. "I think it was intended just to induce a choking sensation. Outside the room, in lower concentrations, it would be less effective. You remember, though, that Mrs Sung complained of poor air quality that night?" 

I nodded, reluctantly. Of course, Mrs Sung had complained about the air on other nights, too, but everything was fitting together so neatly. 

"And then, this may have been used," Zoë continued. 

From her bag, she brought out an electronic device, which had the look of something that had been very recently hand-wired in a workshop. She winked at me, with a told-you-it-was-a-surprise look. 

"I discovered this effect by chance," she said, and pressed a button on it. 

Everyone's bracelet emitted a simultaneous beep. 

"You can trigger the beeper in a standard bracelet with a radio pulse. Short range, but with enough power and a directional antenna you could do it from the corridor outside someone's room. Just a beep isn't very useful, but supposing you modulate the signal?" 

She flicked a switch, and pressed another button. This time, the bracelets didn't beep. They warbled, with an insistent, piercing note. I recognised it at once, and I could see some of the others did too. 

"That's the oxygen alarm!" I said. 

"Precisely. Now put yourself in Mr Warner's place. You hear something go off. You feel you're choking, and you hear the oxygen alarm. What do you do?" 

"The emergency oxygen supply." I felt sick. "Oh, Zoë, no." 

"I'm afraid so." Zoë rose to her feet, crossed to an emergency oxygen point, and pulled the mask out on its pipe. "The robot replaced the oxygen cylinder with one that had been tampered with. Mr Warner put the mask on." She held the mask in front of her face. "The first few breaths he took from it killed him. He fell to the floor, letting go of the mask." 

She released the mask, which retracted back to its position on the wall. 

"Just a minute," I said. "So that brandy in our room?" 

"Was treated in exactly the same way. I think it was meant to go off when we were asleep. We'd have been drowsy, we wouldn't have known what was going on, and we'd have gone for the oxygen masks without a second thought. I expect my original room was booby-trapped as well, but I haven't been back there to check." 

"You said you had evidence," Ms Lombardi said. The idea of three attempted poisonings in a matter of days didn't seem to have thrown her at all. Zoë didn't look too upset at the thought either. It must all have been down to their parapsych training. 

"Lily, you remember that bench in the gallery?" Zoë asked. 

"Yes. A big square thing. We sat on it just before we found the secret door." 

Zoë actually grinned. "It's hollow." 

"So we were sitting right on top of the evidence, and we never knew it?" 

"That's right." She nodded at Mr Schmidt. 

"I examined the bench," Mr Schmidt said. "It contained spare parts and a repair kit for the space suit, and was no doubt used to store the suit when it was not in use. It also contained solar energy collectors, electrical supplies, and a locked box. In the box we found, among other things, a bottle of pills and a jar of air filters, of the correct size to fit an emergency oxygen mask. Both are being analysed, but preliminary results indicate that the filters are impregnated with NC-241, a lethal nerve agent, which was in military use at the time of the Asteroid War. 

"Do you have any other questions?" 

"If all this is true, why did he try to shoot your pod down?" Mr Franks asked. "Wouldn't that give the game away?" 

"It did," Zoë said. "I think it was a spur-of-the-moment thing. Mr Pembroke found out we were going out in a pod. He didn't know what we knew. Perhaps he thought we were trying to steal the goods from under his nose. He couldn't get after us, and using the T-Mat would take time, but he turned on whatever automatic defences the old site had and trusted they'd get us. They nearly did. Any more questions?" 

Mr Schmidt favoured us with his thin smile. "I expect you'll have an answer for this," he said. "I have my own views, as you'd expect. How do you think Pembroke intended to get away?" 

"Well." Zoë sat back in her chair. "It's possible that he just thought he'd lie low and not be noticed. But he made a break for it in the end. I think that what's hidden out there is a warship of some kind." She began ticking off points on her fingers. "It's big. It's a weapon. It would take a long time to extract it and bring it out of mothballs, particularly when supplies are limited to what you can smuggle in." 

"Surely a seismic survey would locate a cave big enough to hold a spaceship," Ms Lombardi said. 

"You could surround it with ice. A general survey would show it as just another ice pocket. There wouldn't be any need to do a detailed survey of that area, and Mr Pembroke was in a position to censor the survey anyway. And melting the ice, slowly enough not to be noticed, would be another reason why they've taken so long over this plan." 

"And what would he do with a ship?" Mr Maranga asked. 

Zoë spread her hands. "I don't know. I think the Independent Cereans would have had plans, but Mr Pembroke? He probably just wanted to get away before the police arrived." 

She looked around the table. "That's it." 

"And it leaves us with a great deal to do," Mr Schmidt said. "When we have some forensic evidence, we can see how good your guesses are, Doctor Heriot. Ms Carson, I have Doctor Heriot's reports but I shall need to take a statement from you. Could you come and see me in my ship later?" 

"Of course," I said. 

"Then, ladies and gentlemen, I suggest we adjourn for now. I trust I can rely on your discretion regarding what has been discussed here? If not, I have equipment that can enforce it." 

Everyone hastily agreed that they'd keep the meeting a secret, and then left, one by one. In the end, I was left standing at one end of the conference table with Zoë. 

"Well?" she asked. 

"Well what?" 

"Do you think they believed me?" 

"I should hope so. I did." 

Zoë shook her head. "Too many guesses. I'd have liked more evidence." 

"They'll find it for you. Cheer up, Zoë, you've solved the case. You've won." 

"I hope so." 

I didn't know what else I could say. She looked drained, as if all the excitement of the last few days had caught up with her at once. In the end, I just gave her a hug. This time she didn't flinch. 


	19. Later

"I thought you deserved to see this, ladies," Mr Schmidt said. "The nearest we can get to a genuine pirate galleon." 

The three of us – Mr Schmidt, Zoë, and me – were standing in another cave. It wasn't as vast as some of the spaces in the Complex, but quite big enough. The cave walls had a smooth, glassy surface rather than the angular, squared-off look of the rocks in the caverns we'd seen before. There was no air, so the three of us were wearing spacesuits. 

Almost filling the cave was a spaceship. It wasn't as big as I'd thought when the term 'warship' had been bandied about, but sleek and deadly-looking nonetheless. There was still ice around its base, studded with small heater units, and the occasional lump of ice on the hull, but the overall outline was clear nevertheless. One of the turrets seemed to be pointing right at me; I shuffled sideways a little, just in case. 

"I take it the poisons you found came from the ship," I said. 

"Possibly," Mr Schmidt said. "It may well be that other weapons have already been removed and reached the Independents back on Earth. There have been some terrorist incidents recently where we weren't able to trace the weapons used. But whatever mischief has already been done, it's nothing to what they could have managed had they got hold of the ship itself." 

"What's going to happen to it now?" Zoë asked. 

"The Navy are sending a destroyer with a team of specialists, to see if they can get this ship out in one piece. After that, I don't know." 

"Just as long as no-one steals it before they arrive." 

"I doubt they will. It may look as if all you'd have to do is walk in and fly it away, but appearances are deceptive. You wouldn't even be able to get in without having a hole burnt in you. Now, let me know when you've finished looking, and I'll take you back to the Complex." 

*

It was the last day of Zoë's holiday, and mine. We'd come back from seeing the warship, had eaten, and were in the bar, just as we had been that first evening, before anyone had mentioned murders and conspiracies. Not having the excuse of needing to keep her mind sharp, Zoë had consented to share a bottle of wine. 

"Feeling better now?" I asked. "Nearly everything you said turned out to be true." 

"I suppose so." Zoë drained her glass. "I wish I could have proved more by myself. It's nice to know you've guessed correctly, but there's something unsound about it." 

"Don't look a gift horse in the mouth," I said. "You were right, and that's what counts." 

"I suppose so." 

"Have you considered being a full-time detective?" I asked. "You seemed to enjoy it." 

"I don't think I could put up with having to work from so little information all the time." She smiled. "Anyway, I've already got a job. And I happen to be the only person there who can get the matter fabricator to work. Probably because I'm the only one who ever bothered to read the manual, but even so." 

She toyed with her empty glass for a few moments. 

"Lily," she said. "When we were sharing a room, did I talk in my sleep?" 

"Yes." 

"What did I say?" 

"Something about targeting missiles, I think, and tellurium. Why?" 

"And did Mr Schmidt ask you that question?" 

"Yes, he did. What's the matter?" 

"I have... recurring dreams," Zoë said. "The parapsychs all say I shouldn't, that my mental state is perfectly well adjusted. But I get them anyway. I can't remember much of them, just the occasional image." 

I wondered where she was going with this. 

"I don't tell a lot of people. But one night I was with Aleeka – she was on the Wheel with me – and a couple of her friends. I told them what I've told you. And they came up with the most stupid ideas I've ever heard. One of them said I was the reincarnation of someone and I was remembering my earlier lives, and the other one said I had second sight. As I said, at the time I thought it was stupid. I laughed so much I got hiccups." 

"And now?" 

"I wonder if UNISYC are thinking along those lines. That they're interested in me because they think I got to the right answer by some power of dreaming true things." 

I looked at her closely. 

"Are you worried because you know you don't have second sight, or because you think you do?" 

She shook her head, and laughed suddenly. "I don't know. Don't pay any attention to me. I think I've drunk too much. Time I was going to bed." 

I helped her to her feet, and walked with her back to her room. 

"We may not see each other tomorrow," she said. "Better say goodbye now." 

"Then goodbye," I said, and shook her hand. 

"We must do this again some time. Keep in touch." 

"I will." 

I turned away, and she opened her door. Then I turned back. 

"Zoë!" 

"Yes?" 

"If you'd known on Wednesday night what you know now, that you were going to get caught up in all this and nearly get killed twice and wondering about UNISYC breathing down the back of your neck... Would you have said you'd look into the case? Would you have got involved?" 

Zoë looked me straight in the eye. 

"Of course," she said. "Wouldn't you?" 


	20. Epilogue: Elsewhere, Elsewhen

_"'Of course', she said. 'Wouldn't you?'"_

_The Master closed the notebook and waited for what he considered to be a decent interval of time. The Doctor remained silent, hunched in his chair._

_"Would you like me to repeat any of it?" the Master eventually asked._

_"No."_

_"Let us be grateful for small mercies." He looked down at the book. "Dear me, that young lady could certainly extend herself. Now, since I am not allowed to leave the TARDIS, I suggest that you replace this journal before the fragrant Miss Carson notices that it is missing."_

_The Doctor clambered to his feet. "I should go back for her," he said wearily._

_"Must we go through this argument again?" The Master began to count points off on his fingers. "Firstly, Zoë Heriot does not know what she has lost. Would that we were all so fortunate."_

_The Doctor winced, and gave the Master a silent, reproachful look._

_"A low blow, you feel, Doctor? Then consider this. She is alive and reunited with her friends and family. She has a steady job and appears to be developing an interesting hobby in her spare time."_

_"She deserves more."_

_"And you would risk everything she currently has, her life included, to give it to her? I have already reminded you once today of the events that led to my presence on board this ship."_

_"Point taken." The Doctor pulled on his long black coat._

_"My third and fourth points, as you will appreciate, would be equally applicable even if the girl were starving in a gutter. The third is this: It is unlikely in the extreme that those who punish us would allow you to reverse their decision unilaterally. They would merely reimpose it, harder."_

_"All right, all right." The Doctor snatched the notebook and swiped at the lever controlling the main doors._

_"I should also remind you," the Master said, his voice positively honeyed, "Our lords and masters have decreed that in two hours we need to be on Epsilon Crucis IV, for some reason they have not seen fit to share with us. Therefore, once you have returned that notebook, we shall have to leave at once. Please try not to relieve any other young women of their diaries, letters or personalia in general before you return. My fourth and final point–"_

_The Doctor swept out, slamming the outer door behind him._

_"As I was saying," the Master continued, speaking to empty air as a monarch might address his loyal subjects, "this situation is one of the many covered by my standing orders. You know the rules as well as I do: We leave the girl behind."_


End file.
